Lola's and Valerie's Pets
By A. Hyatt Verrill
Photographs
by the Author
From Everyland
magazine, Nov.1918; researched by Alan Schenker, digitized by Doug Frizzle,
Mar. 2012.
OF course many readers of EVERYLAND remember Lola and
Valerie, the girls who traveled
through the West
Indies and wrote about their
trip for Everyland. Since then they
have lived for nearly two years in British Guiana in South
America, and while in that faraway land, they
had some of the
most interesting and curious pets you can imagine.
Of course they had parrots, for Guiana
is famous for its great variety of parrots. Even right about the big city of Georgetown and in the
public gardens, you can see wild parrots and parrakeets flying about among the trees. Lola's and Valerie's parrots were not the common
green Pollys which most people see, but were gorgeous birds of many colors and
with the funniest and most
interesting ways.
First there
was Caesar, a little green and orange parrakeet that Valerie bought in the big Georgetown
market on her first visit to South America.
Caesar has made the long journey
back and forth between New York and South America four times; and when his
mistress is in the United States,
Caesar travels everywhere she goes in the
motor-car; so he has toured all over New England. He is so accustomed to traveling that he knows he's going on a trip
just as soon as his mistress commences
to pack her trunk, and he gets excited as a child. Unlike most parrakeets
Caesar is a great talker. He's never tired of saying “pretty boy,"
"bad boy," and "pretty, pretty, pretty." and when he's
excited he cries "Hurry up! Hurry up!" or "Come on! come
on!" over and over again. He also yells, "Hip, hip hooray!" and
whenever he sees wagons passing he calls, "Cash paid for rags." He is
very tame and likes to be petted and fondled, but he is terribly jealous and is
as peevish as a spoiled child if he doesn't receive enough attention.
Lola's first parrot was Boy
Blue, a lovely bird with blue back and purple breast, and with the most beautiful scarlet and blue wings and tail.
He has traveled almost as much as Caesar, and he talks almost as well, and he
whistles like any schoolboy. But while Caesar's voice is shrill and harsh, Boy
Blue's is soft and low. He has great, mild, brown eyes and looks very gentle,
but he has a bad temper and snaps and bites at strangers although he lets his
mistress handle him and play with him by the
hour. Then there was Robert, a huge
blue and yellow macaw, who was a perfect baby in his love for being petted and
who constantly begged everyone to "scratch pretty Robert."
But the
funniest parrots of all were two roly-poly creatures which the girls called Tweedledum and Tweedledee. These
little chaps had green backs and white breasts with orange-yellow necks and
black caps, and a little band of yellow across the
chest and on the legs; so that
Valerie used to say they looked
exactly like little dwarfs dressed in green coats, yellow trousers, and yellow
cravats. Tweedledum and Tweedledee couldn't talk, but they
mimicked every bird, beast, and sound they
heard like regular mocking-birds, and they
were as frolicsome and playful as
little kittens. They rolled over and over, pretending to fight each other: they
hung head down by one leg and spun round and round, and chased their own tails in the
funniest way. But strangest of all, they
always slept snuggled down side by side on the
floor of their cage.
Last, but by no means least,
was Juanita, a magnificent sun parrot. Juanita had a green back and a purple
breast and a gray head, but on the
back of her head was a wonderful crest of crimson and blue feathers which she could raise until it formed a
gorgeous, fan-like crown. Juanita could not talk well, but she was very gentle
and lovable, and best of all, she could do all sorts of funny tricks. She stood
on her head when told to, or she lay on her back and played dead, and then, when she was told to "come to life," she hopped up and raised her
lovely crest and whistled, as pleased as could be at the
fun.
But the
parrots were not the only bird pets
which Lola and Valerie had in their
South American home. There were Toto,
the toucan, whose story has been told in Everyland,
and two other big, black,
white, and scarlet toucans, besides two smaller ones with soft green and brown
dresses. The toucans were always amusing, for they
looked very droll with their
enormous beaks, and the girls never
tired of tossing them bits of food or
paper balls, which they always
caught in their big bills. Toucans
are very funny birds and sleep with their
beaks buried in the feathers of their
backs and with their tails folded up
over all, so they look for all the world like round balls of feathers. They are very lively, active creatures and
make the funniest barking and
yelping sounds, just like puppies, and they
are always hungry. They are fond of bananas, and it is very funny to see one of
these queer birds swallow a whole
banana at one gulp. Whatever a toucan eats he first tosses into the air; then
he catches it in his beak and gulps it down, and he is just as expert in doing
this with a tiny seed as with a big banana.
Another
funny bird the girls owned was the sun bittern, a dainty creature with mottled
brown, yellow, and black feathers,
and red, yellow and black wings which he spread out until they looked like a rising sun. He had long, slender,
yellow legs and the slenderest neck
you could imagine, and he walked mincingly about like a dainty lady. When
frightened, the sun bittern crouched
down, opened his sharp bill, and swayed his neck and hissed just like an angry
snake, but he was really a very gentle, harmless creature. The sun bittern loved
insects, and he spent most of his time catching flies. It was very funny to see
him stalk silently toward a fly until within striking distance; then out darted his slender neck like a streak of
lightning, and Mr. Fly disappeared as if by magic. Sometimes,
too, the sun bittern stood for hours
motionless, with the tip of his bill
against the ground, or he would
stand quietly and sway back and forth on his slender legs like an elephant in the zoo.
Valerie didn't care so much
for the sunbird as for Peter. Peter
was a funny, white-headed tree-duck, a real live "Quacky Doodles"
only he never quacked like ordinary ducks but whistled in a queer, plaintive
way.
But the
most interesting of all the bird
pets was Warri, the trumpet-bird. He
was a very sleek, genteel-looking creature with a soft, gray back and velvety
black head, breast and neck, and with a little spot of metallic green and
purple feathers on his breast. He was
about the size of a Bantam hen, with
long slender legs and a slender neck and with the
biggest, brightest, black-eyes you ever saw.
He was very tame and wandered
at will about the yard and house,
and whenever any one appeared, he came racing forward with his wings half
spread and making a queer, deep, trumpeting noise in his chest. He loved to
take charge of the chickens and
bossed them about like a regular
tyrant, and strangest of all, he was terribly feared by even the most pugnacious old roosters. If a strange rooster
appeared, the trumpet-bird instantly
rushed at him, and although he didn't have spurs, he could strike so hard with
his big feet and peck so viciously and was so swift in his motions that no
rooster could resist him. He would attack a marauding hawk, or even a dog or
cat, just as readily. For this reason the
natives of South American countries always keep trumpet-birds with their chickens, for they
feel sure that as long as one of these
creatures is on guard, no enemy will dare molest the
fowls.
Besides all these birds and several others
I have not mentioned, there were the four-footed animals, some
of which could scarcely be called pets at all. First, there
was the armadillo, a stupid but
funny beast. His only ambition was to be left alone, and he slept nearly all the time. It made every one laugh to see the queer chap burrow into the
ground, for he could dig so quickly that he disappeared almost instantly, and
it was all a person could do to pull him out again.
Then there
was the huge ant-bear which the girls named "Fluffy Ruffles." I doubt
if there is any stranger animal in
all the world than the ant-bear. It has no neck, and its head is all
nose, while it walks with its huge front claws bent back, and when it sleeps it
wraps itself in its enormous bushy tail. The ant-bear has no teeth, but it has
a slender snake-like tongue nearly a yard long; with this it laps up the ants upon which it lives, while its powerful
front feet and strong claws are used in digging out the
ants and tearing their nests to bits.
Nature created the ant-bear to feed
on ants, and it is proof against their
bites. It also has a very ugly and unsociable disposition and a most uncertain
temper. Sometimes Fluffy Ruffles
would let a person stroke her head, but at other
times she would rear up on her hind legs and strike viciously with her front
claws. When an ant-bear does this, it is very dangerous. Even the big, spotted jaguars fear it; so you can imagine
that Fluffy Ruffles was not a favorite pet with the
girls and that they always kept well
out of her reach.
Very different was Jimmy, the tapir. Jimmy was only a baby a few weeks old, a
fawn-colored chap spotted with white, and the
dearest little fellow you ever saw. He followed the
girls about like a dog, answered to his name when called, and just loved to be
petted and stroked. The only sound he could make was a low, shrill whistle, and
his favorite food was bread and milk. His body was short, but his head was
large and it tapered into a flexible nose that was shaped something like an elephant's trunk, only very much
shorter. Do you wonder that Jimmy was a constant source of amusement and
pleasure for the girls?
Of course Lola and Valerie
could not take all these strange
pets with them to the United States;
so they decided to keep just Caesar
and Boy Blue, and the others were sent to the
Zoological Park
in New York.
If any of Everyland's readers
visit Bronx Park, they will see
Juanita and Robert and Toto and all the
rest—even Jimmy the tapir, although
you'd never recognize him, for he has lost his pretty white spots and has grown
to be a big, brownish-gray beast altogether
too large for any girl to hold in her arms.
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