RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31317, 13 March 1967, Page 24

RANDOM REMINDER

BIRD AND BIRD

We can almost see the brass plate on her garden gate. . . . Mis, Judge, L.B.W. (Carisbrook). Everything cured here (bacon and backaches, Mondays only). We are referring to a young lady member of our staff, one who positively brims with kindness to everyone and everything, and one who has shown a startling aptitude for the veterinary sciences. She was in the garden, with a spade, and had in mind to turn over a few leisurely acres before lunch. The atmosphere was dramatically still. All the myriad scents of her colourful garden mingled •übtly, provocatively, the delicate influence of the roses and carnations yielding, just a trifle, to the piquant contribution of the comport heap. She placed a clothespeg on her nose. She rang, aa aha dug, in

the manner of the Seven Dwarfs, pausing now and then to deliver a few kind words to any unfortunate worm she Inadvertently exposed.

L She espied a young spotted brown thrush cowering behind the only surviving dandelion in her lovely lawn. It looked miserable, and in need of help. She bent down and clasped the little one to her, showing all the warm feminine sympathy of a Florence Nightingale. A cursory examination revealed no broken bones, no fever, no pulse. No wonder!

Inside she rushed for the brandy, which had worked wonders with a bed-ridden blackbird. With the aid of an eye-drop, she managed to force the thrush to take a wee dram. It was like a staff partyeach successive dosfl was progressively easier to administer. Whether or not the re-

cuperative powers of birds can be assisted by a drop out of the right bottle, there was clear evidence that the bird’s spirits went up at a rate which showed a marked similarity to the drop in the bottle level. Suddenly, with a flutter of its rejuvenated wings and some shrill singing— It seemed to be a rather slurred rendering of “Get Me to the Perch on Time” —it was off, to find inebriated bliss in the treetops. It would probably have been wiser for the young lady to have kept all this secret Already the whistle while you work contingent has dropped the pops in favour of the calls ' of distressed birds while one member, with a more than considerable wing span, has learned to assume, at will, the appearance of an ailing albatross, complete with ruffled tail feathers. But she’s a nice girl—and they’re the only feathers ruffled ao far.