Fond memories of Pip and Polly

IAN Hutcheson (Letters, September 8) suggests that avian pets might make an entrance.

My family had a budgie called Pip in the 1940s and 50s that loved to perch on an arm of my father’s glasses and work its way around the edges of the Liverpool Echo as dear old dad tried to read his sports results. Pip was allowed a lot of freedom to fly around the house and loved to play football with a pingpong ball.

More interesting for us small girls then was when my father’s barber, Bert Roscoe, went on holiday with his wife Eva and their parrot, Polly, would come to stay with us.

Polly had a very large cage but loved to come out and sit on our wrists. Although a female she had been trained by Bert so spoke with his deep voice. She imitated dripping taps, telephones ringing, doors slamming and the sounds of other birds.

She had a fine line is swear-words too, interjected into her large vocabulary. She had been rescued from a ship in the port of Liverpool, probably brought over by Lascar seaman. To watch her holding a sunflower seed in her claw and daintily nibbling it was quite a sight.

When Polly was ready for bed she would ask for her cover to be draped over her cage. Sometimes her stentorian voice could be heard muttering in a crabbit way from underneath it, and then a raucous shout would eventually emanate: “Eva, shut that b **** y door!”

Thelma Edwards, Old Comrades Hall. Hume,

Kelso.

YEARS ago my brother-in-law’s daughter wanted a dog. He refused, but told her he would be happy to buy her a budgie and she could call it Rover, which she did.

Avril Strong, 39 White Cart Tower, East Kilbride.

IF the First Minister would like to steal a march on the Green Party, she should introduce legislation to make it compulsory for catalytic converters to be fitted to all managed ruminants on Scottish farms.

George Murray,

113 Dundonald Road, Troon.

This spectral image of a pigeon was captured at the weekend by Barclay McBain, Executive Editor of The Herald. It was taken after the bird had flown into a window. Sadly, the pigeon has gone to the great dookit in the sky.