Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 34, Number 88, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 July 1902 — A Parrot Performer. [ARTICLE]

A Parrot Performer.

The capacity of the gray parrot for Imitation is well known. A Contributor to Nature describes a young bird who was a “born actor,” as the phrase Is, and who had not only the power of mimicry, but also the more remarkable power of accompanying his words by appropriate dramatic action. He played with a piece of wood exactly as a little girl plays with her doll. He would take the wood in his claw and would say to it, imitating the voice and gestures of his mistress or one of the servants: “What! Are you going to bite me? How dare you! I will take the stick to you!" Then he would shake bls head at the wood and say: “I am ashamed of you! Whom did you bite? Go to your perch!” He would then take the wood to the bottom of his cage, and putting it down on the floor, would hit it with his claw several times, saying: “Naughty! I'll cover you up, I will!” Then he would step back from it one or more pades, put his head on one 1 side and say, as he looked at it: “Are you good now?” The writer of this letter says that no attempt was ever made, deliberately, to teach the parrot this or any other of his histrionic performances. He picked them up spontaneously from his own observation, and pieced them together from memory. He was brought to his owner straight from the nest in Africa; therefore his dramatie instinct was intuitive, and had not been strengthened by association with the stage and its people. This remarkably clever gray parrot died at the early age of one year and eleven months.