PROMISCUOUS THIEVING

Waipa Post, Volume 42, Issue 3269, 7 March 1931, Page 7

PROMISCUOUS THIEVING

SOMEONE STOLE A CRANE'S EGG. m ■ Some thieves are not entirely lacking in chivalry. Robin Hood would spare the poor; Claude Duva would hand back an unprotected woman's purse with a courtly bow. Other thieves are remorseless. King Ahab stole Naboth's only vineyard; King David appropriated Uriah the Hittite's only wife, although he had several of his own. Now some acquisitive person has taken away the only egg ever laid by the crane at the Melbourne Zoological Gardens. Apart from the moral obliquity of the theft, it was a heart ess act to separate the egg from its mother; though, to be sure, the thief may have honestly—or dishonestly—intended to come back for the crane. What earthly use a crane's egg could be to anyone it is difficult to imagine; yet there are some people who take for the sake of taking. They'are seized by an irresistible impulse; judging by the defence frequently offered in shoplifting cases at the courts, this diseased impulse is as common as the measles. There is a bare chance, however, that all removers of cranes' eggs, unlike all shoplifters, are not kleptomaniacs but .simply selfish collectors. In case of a return. Visit, it would be as well for the authorities of the»Zoo to count the tigers and to keep a watchful eye upon the Polar bear. —Argus.