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The Cairo Zoo 129
be there without being put there. A little way farther on
was a porcupine with rather a human little baby, and the
gentleman egret went up to relieve the lady egret from her
duties of sitting on the nest with the politeness of an
American husband. The sandgrouse were almost pushing
themselves through the floor of their cage in their anxiety
to be invisible in the rather scanty sand. I should have
said that the lady egret, directly her husband took her
watch, went to the food box, and, picking out a sardine,
washed it before she ate it. Perhaps it went down more
easily when it was wet. The Secretary bird, with its wicked
little eye and great horny bill, stood in the attitude of a
man who was going to take a dive, wondering if a snake
would turn up before he was too utterly bored. He is as
sacred as the birds and beasts which had the good fortune
to be gods in the days of the Pharaohs. You are fined I
don't know how much if you kill a Secretary bird, because
the Secretary bird, which has very long horny legs, spends
his entire time in hunting up snakes and eating them. In
captivity it is hard to keep him supplied with cobras and
horned vipers, so he is fed with something more ordinary,
sardines, perhaps. I forget.
If I had seen that idiot of a native keep opening his
umbrella in front of the giraffe, I should have thought he
was trying to take a photograph of the baby giraffe, which
ought to grow up a very tall child, because his father was
seventeen feet high and its mother only a foot or two less.
They spent most of the day standing in the blazing sun
in front of their sleeping-apartments, with their little one
between them. He was only about twelve feet high, but
they were very proud of him, quite human in their pride and
affection. Sometimes the father put on a determined air and
stood with his four legs planted firmly out like a propping
horse, on each side of the water trough. But as a rule his
expression was as mild and foolish as that of the people on
the other side of the railings, who were making remarks about
him.
The prettiest parts of the garden—which had thickets of
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