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:--
IMPERIAL EAGLE.
SCHODDERSTOGHARDTMEISSEN. DEPOSITED.
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, "Hah! 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--'HIS PLACE IN
THE SUN.'" 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!"
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