Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/69

56 themselves in the neighbourhood of the poultry without an uproar of indignant cackling and screaming from all the old hens in the yard, who were ready with beak and claw to execute summary vengeance upon their family foe. On one of these occasions, my hawk, being young and inexperienced, was not able to defend himself. He was rescued with the loss of half his feathers, and barely escaped with life. But, worse than the loss of feathers—nay, almost too shocking to relate, the old hens had actually torn off the upper half of his bill quite close to the head. He was a frightful spectacle, and nobody expected him to live. However, I soon found that in other respects he was not much hurt, and to my surprise I found also that he could even take food when cut small and placed favourably in his poor distorted mouth. I fed him carefully, and soon had the pleasure of seeing that a horny substance was beginning to grow at the root of the torn mandible. By degrees it became more visible, and then projected so far as to be of some use in receiving his food, though he was still dependent upon me for placing it in his mouth. All this while the hawk was at perfect liberty to go or stay as he liked. The feathers of his cut wing grew to their full extent, and he was accustomed to fly about in the day time, always returning to me in the evening, when I used to place him for safety in a cage that was opened in the morning. I observed that the new bill continued to grow, though the disproportioned length of the lower mandible still prevented its being of much use. As it grew the hawk became gradually less tame. He began at length to stay out all night, but always came back to me when in want of food. The intervals between his visits became longer. He grew more timid in his approaches, so that I adopted the method of throwing pieces of food up into the air, where he caught them with avidity, and then flew away. I thought sometimes he had quite forsaken me, when, after the lapse of a week or more, I spied him hovering over my head as I walked in the garden, evidently anticipating his accustomed supply, in which he was never disappointed; until at last, on the expiration of about six months after his accident, he ceased altogether to claim my attention, and I concluded then that his bill had grown so as to enable him to provide for himself.

All this while I was the possessor of a monkey. It had been the dream of my early childhood to have a monkey; and a very pretty little brown fellow was given to me. It was of that species which hang by their tails to the branches of trees, and this power of its tail enabled my monkey to execute a larger amount of mischief than seemed possible for so small an animal. But the possession of this treasure was attended with a good deal of disappointment to me. I found that the tricks of my monkey consisted almost entirely of a mere routine of skilful mimicry, to which now and then some curious coincidence lent a strange drollery; such, for instance, as its tendency to uncork medicine bottles and taste pills, in which occupation it exhibited an amusing burlesque upon the physician. Or when it had watched some white-washers at work, and as soon as they were gone, seized the nearest brush, which happened to be one used for train oil, and dipping it into a bowl of pure milk, worked away at the kitchen wall just as the men had been doing.

It would be impossible to do justice to the amusement afforded to our friends and visitors by this little inmate of the family, who remained with us until his death at the expiration of sixteen years. Equally impossible would it be to record the amount of mischief which he managed to execute in his rambles around and about the house and garden, whenever he was allowed to be at liberty. Indeed such were the depredations he committed in the way of stripping off fruit, sometimes clearing a whole wall of fine pears in an incredibly short space of time; such the incongruous mixtures he left behind him after his investigations amongst dressing-cases, or medicine chests; and such his terrible fractures in china-closets and pantries, that it was absolutely necessary to keep him generally a prisoner. His winter residence was a comfortable recess beside the kitchen-fire, in a situation which commanded the view of a large hall, with all the congregating of animal life both dumb and vocal which used to throng that route, or meet beneath his quick and piercing eye. I mention this, because this situation afforded free scope for the exercise of that peculiar faculty or tendency which was the only thing that has ever struck me as peculiarly interesting in monkey character. This consisted in a rare perception on the part of the animal of the relative rank possessed by different members of the household, and a nice balancing of reverence exactly proportioned to its own estimate of such rank. The highest rank was of course awarded to my father; the next highest, as was very natural, to the cook, and so on through all grades of the family, until the utmost contempt, blended with the same relative proportion of spite, culminated in the lowest kitchen maid, whose red elbows often exhibited the marks of the monkey’s teeth, and whose shrieks of terror were the accustomed announcement that the