River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1891-05-28
HUMORs OF THE OSTRICH.
Some of the Striking Pecuiiarities Of the
Brainless Creature.

4
| The ostrich is not a bird that can be
easily brought up in the way that il
| should go. 1t has no powers of dis
elimination. because God hath de-
prived her of wisdom, neither hath lie
| impaired to her understanding''-as
runs the description of the ostrich in
| the Book of Job. II can not discrimi-
nate between a wire fence and the open
camp, between friends and foes. or be-
tween what is helpful and what is hurt
/ full to its digestion. II was owing to its
want of understanding in this last re-
/ spect, and to an equal want of discrimi-
/ nation on the part of the British public,
| that it has been found impossible to
/ keep ostriches alive in the geological
/ gardens in London. A public accus-
toned TO slip in pennies into automatic
machines could not refrain from the
| temptation offered by the omnivorous
throat of an ostrich, and filed them up
with poisonous copper, as if they were
so many missionary boxes. In its Afri-
/ can life. however, the chief danger that
/ besets it is not the recklessness of its
/ appetite, but its reckless disregard
/ of its own limbs. Ii will take fright
/ at a shadow and hurl itself blindly into
4 the nearest fence, from which it will be
4 extricated with a broken leg; or fight
! savagely with a brother-ostrich, and
| break its leg; or fall into a hole or gully,
/ and break its leg; or dance, Waiting
/ with swift and graceful precision, af
/ fording a most beautiful sight to the
/ spectator and the greatest satisfaction
/ TO itself, until giddiness comes upon it
and brings it TO the ground-again with
/ broken leg. 1t is true that its dan
/ gerously powerful legs are also very
brittle, but il must be confessed that it
/ does not use them well.
of the danger that the owner some
times runs from those powerful limbs,
Mrs Martin tells some very amusing
stories. A sturdy newcomer. some six
feet in height, laughed at the warnings
that were given him when he set ont
for a walk. and disdainfully refused
I the protection of tackey-a thorny
branch, the dexterous use of which will
/ keep the ostrich at bay-averring that
he was not afraid of diclSy-birdr'
/ lie was missed, and discovered some
hours afterward by search party most
uncomfortably perched on the top of
an ironstone bowlder, and slowly grill
/ ing under the African sun, while the
''dicky-bird" did sentry up and down,
/ watching him with an evil eve. AN
other gentleman had theory that any
creature. however savage, could be
! subdued-'quelled,' as he said-by the
| human eve. One day he tried to quell
one of his own ostriches, with the re-
/ suit that he was presently found in a
very pitiable predicament, lying fiat on
the ground. while the subject of
his experiment jumped up and
| down on him, occasionally vary
| ing the treatment by sitting upon
him" Doubtless it was safer to lie
down than to stand up to be kicked;
but to be sat upon as if one were an egg
must have beeh indeed humiliating.
! Curious too, is the account that the au-
/ thor gives of the camps or little king
doms that the ostriches mark out for
themselves with invisible, but never-to-
| be-encroached-upon boundaries. In
side that camp it will bear no intrusion.
| but outside il, in the domain of it's
| neighbor, it is profoundly Indifferent to
! the strangers wanderings. Nor is it
safe for The farmer to presume upon his
former acquaintance with any bird, for
| the ostricn has not wits enough II dis
tinguish an old friend from ne v in
tluder, nor sufficient respect for his
owner to except him from his sus-
! picious hostilities, though it would APP
/ pear that, as a rule, he will manifest a
stronger aversion to the Kaffir or Hot
tentot than to white man.-London