Hunting 
juicy and sweet, and for this reason Abodere ran 
so much risk to capture them. His love of ad¬ 
venture, however, was the real cause. 
It was natural that we should try to enliven our 
solitude a little by having some animal pets, but 
the “drivers" made it impossible for us to have 
any that had to be confined in cages. In a par¬ 
rot and a monkey which had the freedom of the 
premises, we found some pleasant diversion. 
The aptness of the African grey parrot for quickly 
learning to imitate any sound, greatly surprised 
us. My baby parrot which rejoiced in the name 
of Aryaykotor (the world is all wrong) learned to 
imitate the singing of a hen and the cries of a 
distressed puppy in a few days. The counterfeit 
was so complete that I once ran to the rescue of 
the supposed puppy and never doubted but that 
our old hen was enjoying herself until I caught 
Polly performing the hen act. But in the midst 
of her useful life she fell among thieves and we 
never saw her again. 
Older parrots would learn to repeat short sen¬ 
tences with equal facility. To one of these its 
owner said one day, “Why don’t you pray, you 
rascal?” A few mornings after this while its 
owner was praying at family worship, the parrot 
suddenly screamed, “Why don’t you pray, you 
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