The morning call., 1893-05-21
PARROTS AS PETS.
How to Teach Polly to Be
a COnVersatiOnalist.
lie EASIEST OF TASKS.
First Make Friends With Your Par.
rot-Then Be Discriminative.
Diseases of Parrots.
Written for THE MORNING CALL.

Written for THE MORNING CALI.
OF course you have to possess parrot
| before you can be interested in parrots.
but in San Francisco that is so easy. 1t is
often only matter of five dollars. but the
man or woman who gets parrot for ten
| dollars that cannot talk word but Can
! learn to talk will never regret the invest.
| ment.
Polly is unique among birds, and posi-
bly, in the animal creation, in one respect.
Nine-tenths of the male butterflies are
| ornate, while the females parade in sad,
somber black or brown or gray and be-
sides that they don't sing. In cage-birds it
is the same. The males do most of the
singing. most of the talking and chatter
ing, most of the flirting and fighting. and,
beyond cavil, the male birds have the
monopoly of brilliant plumage.
| But the parrot is an anomaly.
| The female parrot Is pretty nearly, If not
| quite, as brilliantly plumaged as the male.
and if you buy parrot, the one is as
likely to DO as much talking as the other.
1t is about as level a proposition as a ques-
tion of territorial rights discussed between
neigh bors in backyard in Tar Flat.
| Yes-aias-a female parrot is quite as
! likely to be talker as "the other fellow
For choice she may talk more, like some
unfeathered beings of far higher type on
Cuvier and Darwin's list
Polly isn't so bad. For men and women
this life is what we make it; happy, gay,
morose, ascetic--you make your game and
! the dice are thrown accordingly, You
make faces at the world. las in looking
glass" and the world makes faces at you.
| But pretty Poll has to take chances with
everything With good surroundings any
parrot will he happy, contented, intelh-
gent, laxative and mpanion able. Put
| twO-year-old child in a room where babel
and confusion of tongues reign, and no
one would expect that child at four years
of age to be anything buta Caspar Hauser.
jargon of the unintelligibe discord of the
woods. So to train parrot to talk the
first thing is to decide what it shall talk,
for tie best of parrots is but living pho
| nOgraph.
Very few men and women speak more
than one language. There are few. per.
haps or per cent, who can make them
selves understood, after fashion. in two
languages. Two per cent of the people OF
| San Francisco may be fairly conversant in
two languages to the extent of speaking,
| reading and writing. One per cent Is a
high average for those who may be reason
ably termed liHgpists. because reading and
writing language comes easy, but speak
ing HuentiY IL llke the Tcf0caro graQuS OF
Or heus and Eurvdice.
Mthrides of Poatus is said to have
| spoken twenty-five languages and Cleo
| patra eleven, but the world has changed
since then. All the same parrot is not
| verSat IN linguistic matters, and it is
about as improbable to put a parrot on
| the street in Lutin-French-C Chinese quar-
ter rs to send young lady to high class
| Doarding-School and expected her to get
anything IN the world but smattering of
French. Spanish. German and Italian.
She will pronounce one with u flavoring oil
tie other, and always with an overpower-
| Ing Anglo-American reservation.
Pretty Polly. the living phenograph, the
parrot that mimcs human speech, must
not be expected to do better than the
humans. Put Polly in restaurant. where
| the customers speak babel of French
suit Will be precisely what perpetual
or continuous photograph would record
under the same circumstances.
Polly will speak purely any language
which she hears exclusively. Every bird
7 dealer will say that an initiative bird like
the mocking- bird or the bul6ncn soon
gets mixed up on the proposition OF hear
Ing a variety of airs in a variety of keys.
The greatest success is achieved with
Corinto parrot kept in room where only
one language is spoken. A Corinto parrot
is the quickest learner and the greatest
talker of his kind.
Necessarily all parrots are tropical birds.
| They are subject to tropical diseases. par
ticularly dysentery. Two-thirds of the
imported specimens die of this disease,
and twentyfour hours start of The NAL
adv involves an inquest.
Pretty nearly every lone woman with
love for talking companion not Nf her
own species has lost parrot in this Way
In nine tenths of the cases the parrot has
been fed with green food. or water has
been paced IN the cage. No green parrot
should be allowed water unless in the
form of moistened coffee or bread. Keep
the parrot dry Men and women are not
benefited by largely liquid diet. neither
are parrots. Once parrot gets dysenterv
| there is only one remedy, drop or two of
laudanum, which is about as likely to kill
as 70 cure.
By some curious dispensation the Afri-
can gray parrot can take all the water he
or she requires without harm, but it is not
so with the Cuban, Maracaiban. Mexican,
! Corintan, or any green parrot.
1t is a funny thing, too. that while thu
parrot is liable to be cut off so quickly by
this one disease tdysentery or inflammation
| of the bowes) few other birds are so long
lived. The parrot is always likely 10 sur
| vive a KIND owner. chiefly because kind
men and kind women are not lODg-liyed.
AS Shelley wrote:
The good die first.
And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust
Burn to the socket.
The parrots which come into the San
Fran cisco bird market are about equally
divided between the yellow head Mexican
and the CorintO varieties.
Every traveller by the isthmus has seen
the canoes put off from the sh ore with the
| bronze hued vendors aboard and the par
rots perehed about all parts of the canoe
and even on the heads aud arms of the
women who sell them.
| The chances are nlwayS gpynnfy- ON
Of hundred that Corinto parrot will
talk. In the case OF the Mexican parrot.
| such as is sold in the harbor OF Acapulco
| or Mazatlan for about pesos, if tho par
rot talks at all it will be good talker,
but 80 per cent will fail. The Corinto par
rot. as q young bird. is so!idly green, with
dark patches of blue and carmine strips
under each wing. When the bird is one
year old yellow spot appears on the
neck and thereafter spreads. hut it ac-
quires no such extension as in the Next
can parrot, where the entire head is yell
| low.
There has been an infinite amount of
nonsense talked about the Mexican parrot.
especially what is known as the double
| yeilowhead." Some of these birds have
been credited with ability to sing two.
three or four songs with the accents and
| phrasing