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All day a blinding blaze of sun beat upon the wooden roof, forced a way through the shaded windows, lay like a blasting spell upon the parched compound. The cluster-roses had shrivelled and died long since. Their brown leaves still clung to the veranda and rattled desolately with a dry, scaly sound in the burning wind of dawn. The green parakeets had ceased to look for sweets on the veranda.
"Do you remember what I said, madame? I am getting it hungry enough to eat one or perhaps all of Clopin's wretched little parakeets." "You think they have to do with the hiding of the paper or the pearl, cher ami? Eh?" "I am sure of it. He would not carry the beastly little things about for nothing." "Ah, you are clever you are very, very clever, monsieur," she made answer, with a laugh.
He began to make his toilet, first licking his right-hand whiskers and then his left. Then he stood up and shook himself and looked interestedly at Calhoun. Tormals are companionable small animals. They are charmed when somebody speaks to them. They find great, deep satisfaction in imitating the actions of humans, as parrots and mynahs and parakeets imitate human speech.
A number of tame parrots and parakeets, of several different species, scrambled over the roofs and entered the houses. In the open pastures near by were the curious, extensive burrows of a gopher rat, which ate the roots of grass, not emerging to eat the grass but pulling it into the burrows by the roots. These burrows bore a close likeness to those of our pocket gophers.
The parakeets were as quarrelsome as their larger brethren yellow-top considered himself quite as good as a dozen green ones; while they, with their loud screeches, created such a disturbance that the skipper sometimes threatened to send them on shore, where they might settle their disputes by themselves.
"Birds can be your friends," Arlen said. "People don't realize." He looked out the window. "I had a parakeet once. His name was Tootsie." "Tootsie," Oliver repeated, sipping whiskey. "An ordinary parakeet, green and yellow but Tootsie could sing! A wonderful singer." Arlen looked back at Oliver. "Parakeets are tough, you know. They are little parrots, actually, strong birds." "Really? Parrots?
Green parakeets with black heads chattered as they flew; noisy green and red parrots climbed among the palms; and huge macaws, some entirely blue, others almost entirely red, screamed loudly as they perched in the trees or took wing at our approach. If one was wounded its cries kept its companions circling around overhead.
The tiyong, or mino, a black bird with yellow gills, has the faculty of imitating human speech in greater perfection than any other of the feathered tribe. There is also a yellow species, but not loquacious. Of the parrot kind the variety is not so great as might be expected, and consists chiefly of those denominated parakeets.
For example, on the morning of the 3rd, as we were ascending the Paraguay, we again and again saw in the trees on the bank big nests of sticks, into and out of which parakeets were flying by the dozen. Some of them had straws or twigs in their bills. In some of the big globular nests we could make out several holes of exit or entrance.
Then followed strange birds from India, parakeets, peacocks, pheasants silver and golden; bustards and ostriches: the latter, bestridden each by a tiny cupid, were led on in golden leashes, followed by antelopes and oryxes, elks from beyond the Danube, four-horned rams from the Isles of the Hyperborean Ocean, and the strange hybrid of the Libyan hills, believed by all spectators to be half-bull half-horse.
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