Sheila and Others/Our Loquacious Poll
OUR LOQUACIOUS POLL
APOLOGY may be due for including in these simple domestic annals the memoirs of a mere Poll Parrot. But as the kitchen was the room preferred and mainly inhabited by this unruly fowl, and especially, as its presence there was a very decided factor in "making home pleasant" for our indispensable Janet, justice demands their inclusion.
Polly was a St. Valentine's bird. She exchanged commercial for domestic life in the midst of a blizzard on the wildest 14th of February I ever experienced. She came done up in a mountainous bundle, her cage enveloped in innumerable layers of paper—both brown and news—each tied up separately in hard knots. I feared to find nothing within but a limp mass of green feathers, when the last wrapping was removed, but instead, there was discovered an observant, grave-looking creature apparently absorbed in inner contemplation.
The yellow head was cocked on one side, the powerful beak ajar, so to speak, and the red eye fixed us in a gaze of unabashed and disconcerting penetration. She had the look of one who weighs and observes but suspends judgment. The same non-committal air still marked her demeanor when with cheerful chirrups, we sought to make friendly advance. She neither accepted nor declined. She simply stared on, curious, detached, inscrutable.
Polly's education had not yet begun when she became an inmate of our establishment, but she had been recommended to us as a promising aspirant after knowledge. Her first achievement in the way of vocabulary was a tentative "Hello!" uttered in a soft accent and with an air of surprise quite different from the stentorian noises suggestive of profanity, with which she was wont to express her own fleeting emotions. Some would-be humorist has intimated that parrots were devils before they became parrots, and their secret ambition is to become devils again. Most humorists lean to exaggeration, but Polly's behavior certainly led to the conviction that there was something in this theory. She took pains to make it evident that she enjoyed being rude and insulting, and that while her exercise of those attributes not compatible with good society were limited by wires and other inconveniences, her desire to employ them knew no bounds. That she itched to behave more outrageously than she knew how to, was only too apparent. This is a bad sign whether in birds or in those who minister to their welfare.
That Polly had a grudge against us from the first was indirectly revealed by her obtrusive preference for strangers, and directly by the sarcastic and vituperative character of her remarks, which, though confined to bird language, the most liberal and indulgent interpretation could not disguise. Of course, Poll was not free from those little discrepancies and incongruities which betray even the subtlest of mortals and which, had she been aware of them, would have undermined her proud arrogance. Her loquacity coupled with her histrionic powers, contributed to this end, for she knew no other than to utter her acquired sentiments in the gentle intonation of her instructor, whereas her own innate feelings were conveyed in tones calculated to arouse, not only the forebodings of the household, but the animosity of the entire neighborhood.
If Polly during her outburst of temper against us could have realized that all her confidences to passers-by regarding her passion for crackers or her desire to have her head scratched, were couched in the very accents of her flouted family, she might have suffered a blighting mortification. The springs of our eloquence, as George Eliot has pointed out, would be instantly dried up, did we but know that our audience was more concerned with the eccentricities of our delivery than with the weight of our argument.
But Poll was not an artist. Her preference for strangers was over done, and consequently unconvincing. It was a mean, round-about way of getting back at us. Moreover, it led to a very unpleasant episode, one which in its turn gave place to a most unhappy end, namely, the curtailment of certain cherished privileges, though, I have no doubt, she ascribed this result solely to our own baseness of disposition. It takes breadth of vision to perceive in ourselves the obscure causes of those actions which displease us in others. Nevertheless it is generally in ourselves that they are to be found.
It happened in this wise. A wedding was to take place at our abode, the happy participants coming from distant and divergent points. The bride elect arrived some time in advance, and not being known to Poll as a relative of the family, was instantly installed as prime favorite. It was almost touching to witness the demonstrations of agitated joy with which Polly welcomed the casual entry of this lady into the room and the delirious rapture aroused in her fickle breast by even the smallest attention from the adored. Two days before the important event, a sad miscarriage of innocent intentions occurred. Polly was clambering over the outside of her cage as usual when the bride-to-be appeared in the doorway. Immediately the bird began emitting those sounds of delight which she reserved for her favorites. "Poor Poll," said the lady indulgently. Polly, holding on to the wires, reached her full, green, elongated length out towards the beloved, who drew slightly back.
"O, she won't hurt you, she just wants to make a little love to you," we encouraged. The lady looked doubtful.
"Go a little nearer," we urged. "She means no harm."
The bride bent down, though somewhat cautiously. If she had not been quite so cautious, all might have been well, but alas, she didn't bend quite far enough, and poor Polly in an escstasy of desire to reach her latest love, stretched too far, and feeling her balance giving way, opened her massive beak, seizing the nearest object that presented itself by way of support. This object, sad to relate, was the bride's nose and from it the next instant Polly was hanging with her full weight while her unwilling host made frantic efforts at dislodgment.
Finding the position untenable, Polly let go, flopping heavily with many agitated gurgles, to the ceiling where she succeeded in gaining a precarious foothold on what our paper-hanger calls the "cornish," whence she emitted loud and unprintable remarks.
The bride's remarks are not printable either. They came from behind the folds of a hastily-applied handkerchief, and were muffled. It was probably better so, for while I feel sure they were not really profane at all, it is doubtful if they were of a nature calculated to soothe anybody's feelings. Everybody's feelings needed soothing just then, even mine. Of course I couldn't say, "Why on earth did you pull back just when you did?" or even offer defense of poor Poll's character. That was gone forever, and it looked for a time as if nothing but her head on a tea-plate would suffice for atonement. It was really a delicate situation.
However, the immediate consideration was not so much appeasement as how to stanch the two bleeding scars which now appeared on the sides of the bride's nose. I won't into particulars. They are painful even in retrospect, but I am sure that none were omitted in the long and low-pitched conferences which took place in the parlor after the prospective groom's arrival. I am glad to be able to say, however, that the gentleman in the case rose nobly to the occasion, and that the wedding took place as pre-arranged in spite of the strange red spots on either side of the bride's pretty nose which powder could neither subdue nor assuage.
As time went on, Polly's linguistic accomplishments increased. I am sure if she had known the satisfaction this gave us, she would have preferred to remain inarticulate. It seemed almost perfidious to take advantage of an ignorance that found expression in the guise of an amiability foreign to its nature. However, one may reflect that Nature herself takes advantage of us in many little underhand ways, and after all, Polly's bread and butter, or rather, her hemp-seed and peanuts, depended upon these accomplishments which she pursued in the ardor of ignorance.
To be sure, she would never "show off" under any circumstances. If invited to do so for the entertainment of interested guests, she immediately lapsed into sodden silence, with not even a spark of intelligence on her cryptic visage. But if we were all busy, with no time to stop and listen even, Poll got in her liveliest work—repeating every word of her vocabulary with meticulous care, always ending with her crowning achievement, "God save the Kig" which was said a dozen times in varying but reverent accents.
Every Sunday morning Polly took a bath. It raised some doubt as to her antecedents that this should transpire once a week only and always on Sunday, but so it was. The performance began by the endeavor to get her large head into her small drinking-cup which was murky with dissolved cracker, for Poll tenaciously clung to the evil habit of dipping her cracker in water before eating it. When her bath-tin was filled with tepid water and placed within her cage, she could be counted on to wet the entire area of the room with its contents, as well as to deafen any spectator intrepid enough to venture near, with her vociferations. In the process of drying herself, which lasted most of the day, she disclosed crimson touches under wing and tail, ordinarily hidden from view; but resented with an animosity disproportionate to its cause, any interest one might show in her personal charms. Indeed, the suspicion was forced upon one that she courted small attentions in order to find excuse for the outlet of her unrighteous spleen, so large was her endowment of this attribute. Everything was occasion of offense to her, and particularly any intimation that her proper sphere was inside her cage. She resented interference at this point with fiendish animosity, but her migrations extended to so wide an area, that we were driven to devising a cross bar of broom handles, firmly attached to a metal base so that she could feel at liberty without the temptation to sink her beak in the surrounding furniture. Fortunately, she took to this arrangement, and spent most of her time in absorbed contemplation of the moving world about her, or in irascible commands that her wants receive immediate attention.
In summer we placed her out under the trees—cautiously at first—where she would stand hour after hour watching in a curious, hypnotic sort of gaze, the flight of birds to freedom born. What dim stirring of racial memory lay under that imperturbable gaze? What emotion was evoked in that dormant intelligence by the vision of wings? Strange, cautionary sounds gave the only clue to her feelings, and these belonged to a world we could not penetrate or interpret. If nightfall found her still under the pine and her clamorous calls for transference to the house remained unheeded, she would sometimes essay transit herself, flopping heavily into the veranda, the cries of uneasiness changing to exultation if she achieved a successful landing.
At dusk she always sought the refuge of her cage calling for the protecting blanket to be adjusted, and when this rite had been completed, she offered up her orisons in a soft, musical "Good-night, good-night," as she settled to repose. It was then that she became endeared to her exasperated family and was forgiven the day's record of miscellaneous misdeeds. Even knowledge of the slices she had taken out of the door-jamb, or chair-back, if occasion had offered, softened in retrospect; and one day when she uttered that same little sweet good-night from the folds of an apron that chanced to be hanging on the kitchen door, you forgave her a whole record of ill-doings in one magnificent lump, for the sake of the laugh it set going and the consequent clearing of an overcharged domestic atmosphere. She had stuck her inquisitive head between the folds and the tone was muffled. When she withdrew it again, you could have sworn there was conscious glee in the mischievous look she wore. Indeed, you often had an uneasy sense that she knew more than was commonly accredited to her. The remarks that came with staggering appropriateness left an irresistible impression that more than elementary intelligence lurked behind the quizzical eye.
I was an unsuspected witness at a neat little drama once when Polly came out ahead. Puss was outstretched in abandonment one hot day near the stove, and Polly observing this, climbed down from her perch with a few sotto voce observations. Waddling over to the unsuspecting feline, she took a large beakful of tail and bit hard on it.
A horrified scream and a black streak to the door testified to the thoroughness of the chastisement and to the emotions of the unfortunate cat. As fast as her clumsy talons would go, Poll beat a retreat to the safety of her perch, where she gave vent to strange cacklings of unholy joy with more than a hint of demoniacal laughter.
Among other accomplishments, Polly had picked up the high-pitched note in which Kitty was summoned to refreshments, and was often caught abusing this capacity. More than once I have seen the discomfited cat after a joyful response, realize the situation and slink away, confused and abashed. After the tail episode there was a gleam in the yellow eye that boded no good for Polly, and the time came when their mutual distrust and antipathy developed into a free fight. Polly, on the insecure footing afforded by the back of the kitchen rocking-chair was at some disadvantage, when puss from beneath clawed up at spasmodic and unexpected intervals. I sacrificed the chair to see it through, and called the family. With crest erect and wings distended, in a paroxysm of rage, Polly endeavored to balance herself on the wobbly chair-back, parry the thrusts from below and get in a few straight jabs herself. She made the mistake loquacity always makes in taking time for superfluous remarks. She dissipated energy in disordered observations unsuitable to the occasion.
It was no time to explain her preference for crackers or request the onlookers to stroke her head. Allowances must be made of course for the exigencies of a limited vocabulary, but it did seem to be carrying things too far for that irate fowl to stand up to her full height, red anger riding her like a hag, and call in a gentle, high-pitched voice "Kitty, Kitty, Kitty," while the object of her adjurations lurked below waiting an opportune moment in which to scratch out a clawful of feathers.
Polly is no more. She departed this life suddenly and inexplicably after her kind, one bright Sunday morning just when there seemed most to live for.
I had been making Banbury cakes the day before, and Polly with raucous and vituperative remarks had filched some of the currants, sugared and redolent of lemon extract, that waited their turn to be imbedded in the delicate flakey crust which makes Banbury cakes beloved of the family. Whether this contributed to Polly's decease, or her lamented end was hastened by her incorrigible habit of soaking all her food before eating it, none can say. She had thieved before when our backs were turned (or weren't) without apparent ill, and she had long made mush of her crackers, but then, of course, there may be such a thing as cumulative retribution—especially where digestive indiscretions are concerned.
Her departure left poignant regret in all but pussy's breast, and an aching void in Janet's life, for in the latter days there had sprung up an attachment between them, Polly permitting all sorts of endearments and familiarities to Janet, indignantly resented from other members of the household. Any feelings of jealousy that might have been evoked by this unnatural conduct were tempered by the obvious fact that it did more than we could to attach Janet to us. Indeed, our grief for our irascible pet was heightened by fear that it might entail a double loss—a fear which eventually deepened into gloomy certainty. For it was not long after her decease that Janet broke to me the unwelcome news that something seemed to tell her to go out to Edmonton to see her cousin whose husband was in the cigar business.
Polly sleeps in a shoe-box deep under the dining-room window, but we do not cease to mourn her loss, and with it Janet's.