Coal twits took flight

YOUR front page item about the parrot and a burglar (‘It’s good to squawk,’ February 29) reminded me of something similar in my own family.

A few years before the Fist World War, cousins of my mother, living in Sheffield, had two parrots that talked not only to them but to each other.

Arriving home one day, they found the iron grating by the front door, where the coalman tipped the coal into the cellar, had been opened.

Not having expected a coal delivery, they investigated and found two sets of footprints across the cellar floor and up the stairs to the door into the house, which was not locked.

There the footprints turned round and retraced their steps – the only reasonable assumption was that the burglars had heard the parrots talking to each other and fled.

JOHN WALKER

Mill Common

Huntingdon