296 
THE LIVING WORLD. 
SOME AMUSING STORIES. 
Many amusing stories are told illustrative of the comical situations fre¬ 
quently provoked by talking parrots, two of which are felicitously reported by 
Woods as follows: 
“ There was a parrot belonging to a friend of our family, a Portuguese 
gentleman who had married an English wife and resided in England. This 
parrot was a great favorite in the house, and being accustomed equally to the 
company of its owner and the rest of the household, was familiar with Portu¬ 
guese as well as English words and phrases. The bird evidently had the 
power of appreciating the distinction between the two languages, for if it were 
addressed its reply would always be in the language employed. 
“The bird learned a Portuguese song about itself and its manifold perfec¬ 
tions, the words of which I cannot remember. But it would not sing this 
song if asked to do so in the English language. 
Saluted in Portuguese, it would answer in the same 
language, but was never known to confuse the two 
tongues together. Toward dinnertime it always 
became very excited, and used to call to the servant 
whenever she was late, ‘ Sarah, lay the cloth—want 
my dinner!’ which sentence it would repeat with 
great volubility, and at the top of its voice. 
“ But as soon as its master’s step was heard 
outside the house its tone changed, for the loud 
voice was disagreeable to its owner, who used to 
punish it for screaming by flipping its beak. So 
Polly would get off the perch, very humbly sit on 
the bottom of the cage, put its head to the floor, 
and instead of shouting for its dinner in the former 
imperious tone, would whisper in the lowest of voices, 
‘Want my dinner! Sarah, make haste, want my 
dinner!’ 
“ In the well-known autobiography of Lord Dun- 
donald, there is an amusing anecdote of a parrot which 
had picked up some nautical phrases, and had learned 
to use them to good effect. 
“ Some ladies were paying a visit to the vessel, 
and were hoisted on deck as usual by means of a 
‘whip,’ i.e.y a rope passing through a block on the yard-arm, and attached to 
the chair on which the lady sits. Two or three had been safely brought on deck, 
and the chair had just been hoisted out of the boat with its fair freight, when 
an unlucky parrot on board suddenly shouted out, ‘ Let go!’ The sailors 
who were hauling up the rope instantly obeyed the supposed order of the 
boatswain, and away went the poor lady, chair and all, into the sea. 
“ Its power of imitating all kinds of sounds is really astonishing. I have 
heard the same parrot imitate, or rather reproduce in rapid succession, the 
most dissimilar of sounds, without the least effort and with the most astonishing 
truthfulness. He could whistle lazily like a street idler, cry prawns and 
shrimps as well as any costermonger, creak like an ungreased ‘ sheave ’ in the 
pulley that is set in the blocks through which ropes run for sundry nautical 
SOUTH AMERICAN GRAY PARROT. 
