The Sparrow in the Zoo

by Phil Robinson

THE SPARROW IN THE ZOO.

By PHIL ROBINSON.

IT is not easy to astonish a sparrow. You can scare them—"often scared as oft return, a pert, voracious kind"—and make them fly away; but that is only because the sparrow has the bump of self-preservation very prominently developed, and takes a hint as to personal danger with extraordinary promptitude. But though it may remove its small body out of harm's way for the time being it is not disconcerted. You can see that by the way in which it immediately goes on with its toilet. Its nerves have not been shaken—that is evident from its obvious self-possession, and the way it scratches its head and makes a note of the fly which went by. It would not commence at once a frivolous altercation with another of its kind if it had been disconcerted. And really, it is not to be wondered at that the sparrow should be beyond the reach of astonishment. Think of what it sees, and sees quite unconcernedly, in the streets of London. Put a tiger into Fleet Street, or a bear at the Bank, and the poor beasts would go crazy with terror. A single omnibus would stampede a troop of lions. Yet a sparrow surveys the approaching fire-engine undismayed, and it sits with its back to the street when a runaway van comes thundering death down Ludgate Hill. The small bird's life is, in fact, so made up of surprises that it regards the astounding as commonplace. So a fly, silting down in a train, thinks nothing of finding itself in the next county when it gets up. Its whole existence is volcanic and seismic. It cannot settle on a hand without the hand moving. What would a dog think if, on going into a ten-acre field, the field suddenly turned over? But the fly is not put out of countenance by such "phenomena." It comes back to the hand again. It is the same with the sparrow. It thinks no more of another wonder than the Seven Champions did of an extra dragon in the day's work.

All the same, I have seen a sparrow totally confounded and all to pieces. It was, I confess, only a young one, with just the promise of a tail—nothing more; and some odds and ends of fluff still clinging between the red feathers. I was looking at the rhinoceros, which was lying down close to the railings, and a very sleepy rhinoceros it was. Except for slight twitchings of the tail and an occasional fidget of the ears, it was quite motionless. And the young sparrow hopping about in the enclosure, coming to the beast, hopped on to it, looking in the chinks of its skin for chance grains or insects. And as it hopped all along its back on to its head the rhinoceros winked, and along its head on to the little horn, and from the little horn on to the big one (and it blinked), and then off the horn on to its nose. And then the rhinoceros snorted. The sparrow was a sight to see. Exploded is no word for it. And it sate all in a little heap on the corner of the house, and chirped the mournfullest chirps. "I hadn't the smallest notion the thing was alive," it said. "Oh dear! oh dear!" and it wouldn't be pacified for a long time. Its astonishment had been severe and had got "into the system." I remembered the story of the boy who sat on the whale's blow-hole. Behemoth had got stranded on the Shetland coast. While the population were admiring it, an urchin climbed on to the head of the distressful monster, and exultantly seated his graceless person on its forehead. He had but a short time to enjoy his triumph, and the next instant the whale, filling itself with air, blew such a blast through its blow-hole that the boy was blown up into the air and out to sea. So said the veracious chronicler of the day—and I hope it was true, for little boys should not, under any circumstances, sit on the blow-holes of whales. Nor young sparrows on the nostrils of a rhinoceros.

"But that was nothing," said the sparrow in answer to my condolence, "to what happened to my mother once, the first day she came here. She was feeding in an enclosure where there was a pond, and in the middle of the pond was a great ball of white feathers on the top of a long pink stick. She was quite young, and thought the feathers would be nice and warm to go to sleep in. So she flew up to it and got inside the feathers. And before she knew where she was, the ball opened out and two great wings, scarlet and black, began to flap, and a great long neck with a crooked beak at the end of it came out from under the wings—it was a flamingo! But the fright my mother got then she never got over, and for ever so long she had a white feather in her tail. It was the fright that turned it white, she said.

"It's a dreadful place, the Zoo," broke in another sparrow who had come up, "a dreadful place till you get to know it—and then you don't care so much."

"Why! what do you mean—a dreadful place? Boys can't throw stones at you here, and there are no cats."

"No cats! It's worse than cats. What I mean is this. We get so accustomed to animals in their cages when we're inside that we forget when we are outside that cats will catch us. When you've been all the morning among a lot of things all going out and doing you no harm, you are very liable when you see a cat coming along to take no notice of it till it's too late. That's what happened to my father. Besides, you never can tell what's inside a cage and what isn't. You get on to some stand, and all of a sudden out comes a paw and makes a grab at you. Or you're hopping about on the floor, and down comes an arm out of some box or other up above you. Until you get accustomed to it it's very nervous work, I can tell you. Then they're always changing the animals about so. You think you know all about a cage one day, and the very next you are frightened into fits by something new bouncing out at you—something you've never seen before. And as for cats, the gardens are full of them."

"Then why do you stay here?"

"Because it's my home, for one thing, and, besides, it has its advantages. Food is plentiful and of great variety, and there are all kinds of cosy nooks and corners for nesting. You haven't seen my nest? No. Well, you should. I was thinking of sending it to some college. It would make a good examination paper for students."

"What do you mean?"

"That it would take a very good naturalist indeed to say what it was made of. Outside it is straw and hay, with a lot of yak-tail hairs worked in and tufts of bison-wool, and just under the entrance there is a curl that I found in the gnu's place. Inside, of course, it is all feathers, and such a mixture! I don't know what they all are myself, but there are emu's, a golden eagle's, and fluff off a young sea-gull, and swan's-down, and ever so many more. And as for my food, it is made up of half the crops of the world—grains that I do not know the names of and most extraordinary fruits. I had a friend who lives in the Gray's Inn Road staying with me once for a week, and she said she never saw such outlandish victuals in all her life, not even at the West India Docks, where one of her husbands picked up a pimento pepper, thinking it was something else, and died in a fit on the spot. Talking of fits, I nearly had one this afternoon. I was picking up crumbs in Victor's den—he is the Queen's lion, you know—for somebody had thrown him a bit of bun, when all of a sudden he made a grab at me. You wouldn't have thought a lion would have done such a thing, would you? Nor would I. And it was a nasty, mean trick, I call it. And the other day I went into the Reptile House with one or two more, the windows being open for the heat, and seeing some bread going to waste in one of the tanks, down I went to get it, and no sooner had I sat down than snap went the thing I was sitting upon, and there was such a rumpus, all a-swishing and a-swashing about! They said I had sat down on a crocodile's head. Perhaps I did, but it was the crocodile's fault for looking so like a bit of old wood; and they feed them on sparrows, which I call a shame——"

How long the bird "that loves to chirp and talk" would have gone on I don't know, but the rhinoceros woke up and snorted, and my garrulous friend vanished.

What thorough little Britishers these sparrows are, with their robust independence, their stubborn retention of original ideas and obstinate assertion of rights, their preference for communities, and their dogged dislike of hybridisation! Like ourselves, they are thoroughly insular, and like ourselves, the greatest of travellers and colonists, aggressive, intrusive and philosophical. The sparrow is really the typical Briton, and ought to be our national bird. Cowper, I know, addresses it as "meanest of the feathered race," and goes on to reflect upon its moral character in most slanderous fashion; and Prior has these dreadful lines—

 

Begone! With flagging wings sit down
On some old penthouse near the town.
In brewers' stables peck thy grain,
Then wash it down with puddled rain;
And hear thy dirty offspring squall
From bottles on a suburb wall.

 

But poets don't matter much. Facts are all in favour of the sparrow. It goes with our race wherever it goes. From Durban it marched to Ulundi, and no doubt is flourishing in Zululand. From India it went to Cabul and Candahar, and by this time, no doubt, has spread to Bokhara and met the Russian on the Pamirs. The track of a commissariat wagon or a caravan is quite enough for the sparrow. Where white men go it follows. Ten years ago I drew "the sparrow line" of the United States. It had then reached Omaha from the West, and Salt Lake City from the East. By this time, I expect, it has routed the snow-birds out of Cheyenne, and lords it right across the continent. In Australia and Canada the bird is at home, and daybreak in the Mauritius or Ceylon brings with it the morning chirp of the sparrow. And how compendiously here in Regent's Park he finds all the experiences of travel collected together! Let sparrows from all the empire come, and not one of them need find itself abroad. Here they can feed as they have been accustomed to feed, and sleep among creatures with which in the tropics or the snows they have become familiar. It is only the bird home-born, home-bred that finds the Zoo a little puzzling at first. When drinking by a pond, a sea-lion may put up his head, or when finishing a scrap of cherry in the lemur's cage, a long thin hand may come stealthily down from above, these developments are unexpected—once. But thereafter the sparrow knows all about them, and the next time takes no more notice of a sea-lion than it does of a passing express, and keeps as far away from lemurs as it does from ordinary cats. But watch them when and where you please, you never see the sparrow astonished. Except of course, when it sits on a rhinoceros's nose.