Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 271, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 November 1913 — TALLS of GOTHAM AND OTHER CITIES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

TALLS of GOTHAM AND OTHER CITIES

Fights Bird for Feather So as to Win Husband

NEW YORK.—"Bill the Beak.” the giant macaw In the Central park [bird zoo, expelled a tdrriflc shriek. A woman had hold of BlH’b tail. The '■'woman tugged and pulled at the long (feather which make* Bill the envy ■of all the other birds in the zoo. And the more the woman pulled on ©ill's tail the more the big bird shrieked his mingled rage and pain. Finally Bill got the woman's offending fingers between his beak and nipped her savagely. The head birdkeeper and proven!der provider fortunately ran up at that moment. He found a woman who paid that she was Matilda Garrison, iformerly of Salem, Mass., tenderly inursing a nippeed finger, with tears in

her eyes. "Bill the Beak” was smoothing out hiß ruffled tall feathers and croaking discordantly. “What do you mean by trying to jerk that parrot’s tail out?” demanded the head birdkeeper. Miss Garrison Bniffied. “I am one of the Salem left-overs,’* she explained. “There are thret times as many girls in Salem as there are men, and, like hundreds of other Salem girls, I was unable to get a husband. Recently I came to New York and consulted an astrologer who told me that if I could get the tail feather of a macaw and would wear it in my hat during the day and under my pillow at night during tb,e ascendency of the planet Uranus I would marry a handsome young man with plenty of money. “I heard that there were macaws at Central park and came here this morning to see if one of them wouldn’t shed a feather. After waiting for half an hour or so for one of them to drop one I put my hand through the bars. That’s all I remember until I felt my finger in that nasty bird’s beak.”