Читать книгу Incomparable Budgerigars - All about Them, Including Instructions for Keeping, Breeding and Teaching Them to Talk - Percy Gladstone Frudd - Страница 11

“Hello, everybody! This is Beauty Metcalfe calling—I’ll be seeing you!”

Tap! Tap! Tap! went his tiny beak upon the rim of the pepper-pot.

“Where’s Georgie-Porgie-Porgie? I beg your pardon! Ha! Ha! Jolly good!”

My mouth opened as though to laugh, my eyes had already assumed the proportions of dinner plates. It was unbelievable; it was uncanny. I could not speak. A feeling of awe had taken possession of me. I felt that I was hoist with my own petard. For the past two years I had boosted the ‘talking budgie’, and in that time had heard hundreds of these fascinating little fellows displaying their linguistic abilities; and yet, until I had made the acquaintance of Beauty Metcalfe in person, I had seen and heard nothing. Now I felt very foolish.

“Humpty Dumpty, sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall,

And all the King’s horses (pronounced horsis) and

all the King’s men

Couldn’t put Humpty together again.”

Before I had time to register my surprise, he was at it again—with a true Oxford accent, too.

“Every time I look, the monkey’s on the table.

Get a stick—get a stick! and knock him off,

And Pop! goes the weasel. . . . Jolly good!”

“You say it, Beauty. . . . Ha! ha!”

He laughed at his own joke.

He danced up and down, he bowed and rubbed his nose on now dented top of that famous pepper-pot. What action! His neck was arched, his spotless white bib stood out in front of him like a ruffle—he was proud! He turned quickly, ran to the edge of the table, cocked his head sideways and looked at me.

“Hey diddle diddle. . . . Go on, you say it!”

I gasped! His eye held me spellbound. It was bold and extraordinarily bright—there was a look of profound intelligence in it. I must have looked for all the world like a credulous youngster standing open-mouthed before a Punch and Judy show, for Beauty simply chuckled and scampered back to his pepper-pot. Never had I heard such a melodious expression of exultation, never had any budgie in my recollection shown such vivacity.

“Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheep . . .” word perfect and with flawless delivery, was followed instantaneously by—

“Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet . . .”

“Doesn’t he ever get mixed up?” I asked.

“Oh yes, sometimes. He gets terribly excited like a precocious young child,” said his Mistress, “He goes too fast, and then . . . . . he only chuckles and says, ‘Say it again, Beauty,’ so we cannot scold him.”

“Sing a song of sixpence. . . .”

He went through that with lightning speed. I tried to say the words, silently, in time with him, but got badly tongue-tied. He must have known, for he gave me such a look from the corner of his eye.

“You say it, Beauty!”

I felt snubbed.

“Good-night!”

I deserved that. For nearly twenty minutes he had given me excerpts from his repertoire, without pause. Who was I but a mere scribbler? while he—he was a “Star”

On the night of December 2nd, 1937, for almost thirty minutes, Beauty Metcalfe, a lovely, deep blue budgerigar, held the world astonished as they listened in to the recording of his thrilling chatter. There was not the slightest shadow of doubt; he scooped the pool.

Many critics said that the record had been joined up; that no living bird could have spoken for so long a period without pause or prompting. But I assure all those people who listened in to North Regional that night that this was a perfectly true recording of the most famous talking bird in the whole world. ‘Beauty’ had made history. Henceforth that fascinating little fellow—“The Incomparable Budgerigar”—will be known as the perfect copyist of human speech.

It was with a feeling of regret that I took my leave—but tiny children such as he have to be asleep long before we ‘burners of the midnight oil’; it was long past ten o’clock. Yet I felt deep a reverence for that pioneer who first gave us the means of recording for all time one of the marvels of nature.

On February 26th, 1938, “Beauty” again took the world by storm when he featured in “In Town To-night” broadcast. Was he not ‘Incomparable’?

A mere morsel of gorgeously coloured feathers, Beauty Metcalfe is worth many times his weight in gold. May he have a long and happy life.