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Moral of the story: 
Not only the elephant 
never forgets his friends. 
by Jean Lewicki 
My daughter rushed into the house and shout- 
ed, ‘“‘Mother, there’s a robin outside, and its 
back is bleeding and most of its feathers are 
missing!”’ 
Not knowing how to help it, I threw it 
some bread and tried to give it water. Although 
it did not respond at first, in a few days he 
found his way to our back yard and eventually 
right to the back door. 
He became a pet who responded when we 
called “‘Robbie,’’ and would actually fly from 
a tree or the fence, or even run down the side- 
walk right to my feet! 
What a treat for all of us to have him 
bring his young to our back door for food and 
protection. When other birds would try to 
steal his food, he would run to the door and 
look up and wait for us to open the door and 
frighten the other birds so he could go on 
eating. 
This ritual began in April, 1967, and 
continued until late October. We became quite 
concerned because most of the robins had gone, 
but Robbie finally left the day before a cold 
spell during the last week in October. We 
spent an anxious winter wondering what had 
become of Robbie. 
One of our treasured moments was St. 
Patrick's Day, 1968, when we spotted our first 
robin of the year. I ran outside and called 
“Robbie, is that you?’’ and that dear little bird 
flew to my feat and looked up at me! He still 
remembered how to pull raisins from his bread. 
During that summer and fall, and for the 
next two years, we enjoyed our dear little robin 
