Prank
Upon the Richards Flying Field, near Kansas City, a puppydog appeared, seeking friends. Some pilots did not reject his overtures, but one, taking a dislike to his shy looks and gentle manners, took him away in an automobile, deserted him on a lonely highroad. The puppy made his way back. Finding that the beast survived even his own natural inclination to sniff at whirling propellers and perform in the path of descending planes, this flyer, one Waldo Robey, pilot of the Porterfield Flying School, took him 800 feet up in a plane, dropped him overboard. The diminutive body, smashed to pulp, buried itself a foot deep in the earth. . . . "Just a little prank," said Pilot Robey, grinning uneasily. E. E. Porterfield Jr. (head of the Porterfield Flying School) heard of the act, frowned, called Robey to his office, dismissed him from the school.
Eagle
As everyone knows, the eagle is a bird more remarkable for vigor than sagacity. This was again proved when the little steamer Sulanierco recently sailed away from Porto Pico followed by a huge black and white eagle soaring high above her wake, disdaining to swoop for scraps thrown by the cook unless they consisted solely of meat.
The cook, intrigued, threw many a meat scrap. The eagle, unwary, flew farther and farther seaward—followed the Sulanierco 20 miles with ease, 10 more by settling down to earnest purposeful flapping, 10 more by resorting to tricks of volplaning and wind-catching, 10 more with every tendon of its great wings strained by the torturing, racking effort.
As the 50th mile passed, the eagle reeled crazily in the air, sideslipped, almost dropped into the foam. The cook sought to lure it to alight and rest by spreading meat scraps upon the stern. The eagle soared once more by great effort, distanced the ship for an instant, suddenly appeared to faint in midair, fell thump upon the deck. . . .
When the Sulanierco anchored at Boston last week her crew, having nurtured the eagle back to health, presented it to the Franklin Park Zoo. Caged, the stupid eagle will soar no more.
Horses Tortured
Pondering sadly the numerous mishaps to animals during the week, horse lovers found themselves especially incensed by the act of one Schwarz. (See GERMANY, "Horses, Crocodiles.")
Fall
It is hard to have a garden when you live on the tenth floor* of a hotel. Leaning out of the window of her apartment in the Hotel Charlotte (Charlotte, N. C.) a certain Mrs. A. A. Barren propped a heavy green box, filled with earth and flower seeds, on a corner of the ledge before lowering it to a little stone shelf that ran around the building a foot lower down. She reflected on the long way her garden would fall if she let it go.
First the box would twirl down six stories to the flagpole, then four more to the marquee over the sidewalk. There was a mesh of strong wire over the upper side of the marquee to protect the glass from things that might be dropped out of windows. Yes, the box would probably be broken to bits. It would frighten that woman†in the car in front of the hotel; it would make the traveling salesman** in front of the drugstore jump out of his skin. Slowly, cautiously, Mrs. Barron began to lower the box out of the window.