Kookaburra's Little Joke

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23381, 24 June 1939, Page 9 (Supplement)

Kookaburra's Little Joke

TTOILYWOOD film directors were recently baffled by the question, What makes a kookaburra laugh? If they had known the answer to it the filming of Captain Fury would not have been held up for three days while four kookaburras, rented for 200 dollars a day, "perched unrelentingly on the limbs of an artificial tree and sneered at all attempts to amuse them." Scenario writer Grover Jones caused the trouble by making a kookaburra's laugh an integral part of the script, but 3 he soon admitted that he did not inow how to make, the bird laugh. Finally the director of the film appealed to a "park superintendent from whom the birds were hired, but the superintendent, though lie worked hard, failed to produce even a chuckle. j " In the end the disgusted film probers had the sound equipment dismantled, and then the kookaburras, ill four, laughed long and loud, but gave it up before the ec|uipmeut could be remounted. •' f&wp Little did they realise how Jg&k eSsily the problem could have bsen solved. Give it a mouse and a kookaburra will ex- iffllffl press his amusement in no. Vl'PJf | uncertain manner. At least, ,1; i ' this is the recipe prescribed by the curator of a zoo in this country. Kookaburras delight in killing, he says, and in their native habitat in Australia they may often be heard bursting into peals of laughter as they begin playing with & mouse or a snake. The curator added that the kookaburras in his zoo- were solemn fellows. Occasionally they liiughed at about dawn or toward sunset, but more tisually they were content to wear glum expressions. Kookaburra is the Australian name for the laughing jackass, or, more Properly, the Dacelo gigas. A native of Eastern Australia, the bird lives mainly on small snakes, lizards, and mice. For this reason it is protected by the Australian Government.