Page:Punch (Volume 147).pdf/511

December 2, 1914.]

Inspector.

Constable.



Clarence (who pulls the path roller) says there's a Society for the Maintenance of Horses' Rights. I wish there was one for the Abolition of Eagles' Wrongs. I am an eagle, the handsomest eagle in the Zoo, and I sometimes wish I were a sparrow. Moult me, but I've even wished I were stuffed. And all because the authorities won't change my label. It's true the notice they've put on my cage telling people to keep their children from the bars has stopped the young brutes from shooting me with peas and monkey nuts, but it can't save my feelings; and all because—but there! this is how my own particular official label runs:—

You can imagine the situation. How in the firmament am I to tell the public that Schodderstoghardtmeissen is a craggy headland on the coast of Norway, and not in the least associated with Germany or Austria—places I never heard of till but recently. But ever since the men in khaki first made their appearance in the Gardens some four months ago a most extraordinary undercurrent of opprobrious criticism has crept into the public's conversation, that public once so full of admiration for my noble bearing—unless it saw me walk; for which reason I don't come off my pedestal in public hours if I can help it. But now the mildest visitors seem to hold themselves under a moral obligation to connect me in some manner with what Clarence calls the "present crisis."

Sixpenny days are my worst. "There's the German eagle!" says the crowd. I can't even sit in my water trough without being told I'm "entrenching " myself.

Only last chicken's-neck day (we dine alternately on poultry and—er—the joint) an old lady paused before my quarters and, her head on one side, murmured musingly: "Yet I always thought the Austrian eagle had two heads, but perhaps I'm thinking of the unicorn." Half an hour later a party stopped in front of me, and one of them says: "Them Jermins didn't deserve a noble-looking bird like 'im to represent 'em, did they, Hemelie? Something with scales and bat's wings 'ud be more appropriate, I don't think." "Yes, an' a drunkard's liver," chimes in another, and then they all laughed. Scr-e-e-e-e-e-ak!!

Even the regular visitors are no better. The stout old gentleman—an editor and an F.Z.S., if you please—who used to get Michael, my valet, to let him see me from the private window, just glares at me over the top of his newspaper and mutters, "Halt! my fine bird, you're coming off your perch head-first before many months are over." And the newspaper cameraman, who used to take my portrait whilst Michael fed me with tit-bits—last week he caught me warming my spread wings in a little patch of sunlight. "Just the stuff," he twittered, as he struggled with his camera. "Great wheeze! Splendid snap for a full-page—'. It wasn't my fault if I didn't spoil the photograph.

The very latest is a rumour that my right wing is likely to be crumpled up. And the griffin vulture next door, who saw something of the sanatorium when he swallowed a lighted cigar-end in mistake for a glow worm, hopes they'll give me chloroform. It's also whispered that I'm moulting, but that, I know, isn't true.

Well, I suppose it must all end one day. As it is, I find myself looking back longingly to the time when to the public I was just an eagle and a king of birds. I can even remember with toleration the two simple souls who once perched upon a garden-seat before my apartments. Said one, "There y' are, M'ria. There's one of them armerdillers young Bert was tellin' us about." And the other replied: "Why, don't you know no more nat'ral 'ist'ry than that, Elfrid? That ain't a armadiller; that's a 'ummin'-bird!" 