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see you’re the best doctor in the world. Take care of animals instead—they’ll soon find
it out. Be an animal-doctor.’

‘Oh, there are plenty of animal-doctors,’ said John Dolittle, putting the flower-pots
outside on the window-sill to get the rain.

‘Yes, there are plenty,’ said Polynesia. ‘But none of them are any good at all. Now listen,
Doctor, and I’ll tell you something. Did you know that animals can talk?’

‘I knew that parrots can talk,’ said the Doctor.

‘Oh, we parrots can talk in two

languages—people’s language and bird-
language,’ said Polynesia proudly. ‘If I say,
“Polly wants a cracker,” you understand

me. But hear this: Ka-ka oi-ee, fee-fee?’

‘Good Gracious!’ cried the Doctor. ‘What
does that mean?’

‘That means, “Is the porridge hot yet?”—
in bird-language.’

‘My! You don’t say so!’ said the Doctor.
‘You never talked that way to me before.’

‘What would have been the good?’ said
Polynesia, dusting some cracker-crumbs
off her left wing. ‘You wouldn’t have

understood me if I had.’

‘Tell me some more,’ said the Doctor, all excited; and he rushed
over to the dresser-drawer and came back with the butcher’s How do you say Language
book and a pencil. ‘Now don’t go too fast—and I’ll write it ‘parrot’ in your
Connect
down. This is interesting—very interesting—something quite language?
new. Give me the Birds’ ABC first—slowly now.’

So that was the way the Doctor came to know that animals had a language of their own
and could talk to one another. And all that afternoon, while it was raining, Polynesia
sat on the kitchen table giving him bird words to put down in the book.

At tea-time, when the dog, Jip, came in, the parrot said to the Doctor, ‘See, he’s talking
to you.’ cracker: a type of
food, often a small,
‘Looks to me as though he were scratching his ear,’ said the Doctor. dry, crisp biscuit-like
snack

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