Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 October 1895 — A Parrot’s Inference. [ARTICLE]

A Parrot’s Inference.

Among the neighborhood stories told and implicitly believed in the Massachusetts town of W. is one which we should be slow in asking any reader to credit, but which is interesting as an example of the local wit in story making. The wife of Deacon Saunders, an excellent citizen of the place, is said to have possessed a<parrot of exceptional Intelligence and remarkable conversational powers. On one occasion Mrs. Saunders was making cucumber pickles. She had the cucumbers in a dish on the kitchen table, and was stirring a kettle of hot vinegar and spices ovei; the fire with a wooden spoon. While thus engaged she chanced to turn about, and saw the parrot making off with one of the cucumbers. “Ha, you rascal! You’ve been stealing pickles!” she exclaimed, and threw the wooden spoon, dripping with boiling vinegar, at the bird. It struck him on the top of his head, and though it inflicted] no serious injury, its effect was to take the feathers entirely off the top of the bird’s head, leaving him bald for a season. Some time afterward a minister from another town came to preach at the W. church, and took dinner at Deacon Saunders’. He was quite bald. As the

family and the minister sat down at the table, the parrot, who had the freedom of the room, eatne up and perched on the tall back of his chair, and eyed the top of bis head with a close and highly interested scrutiny. And then the bird called out harshly: “Ha! you rascal! You’ve been stealing pickles!”