Their Grey Plumage Being So Much Like The Cardoon
Bushes In Colour Had Prevented Me From Seeing Them Before I Was Right
Among Them.
The strange thing was that they paid not the slightest attention to
me, and pulling up my pony I
Sat staring in astonishment at them,
particularly at one, a very big one and nearest to me, engaged in
leisurely pecking at the clover plants growing among the big prickly
thistle leaves, and as it seemed carefully selecting the best sprays.
What a great noble-looking bird it was and how beautiful in its loose
grey-and-white plumage, hanging like a picturesquely-worn mantle about
its body! Why were they so tame? I wondered. The sight of a mounted
gaucho, even at a great distance, will invariably set them off at
their topmost speed; yet here I was within a dozen yards of one of
them, with several others about me, all occupied in examining the
herbage and selecting the nicest-looking leaves to pluck, just as if I
was not there at all! I suppose it was because I was only a small boy
on a small horse and was not associated in the ostrich brain with the
wild-looking gaucho on his big animal charging upon him with a deadly
purpose. Presently I went straight at the one near me, and he then
raised his head and neck and moved carelessly away to a distance of a
few yards, then began cropping the clover once more.
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