The Parrot Who Caused a Collision
A mischievous pet parrot in a remote station house triggers a fatal train collision by imitating a telephone order.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
In a remote town in the far west, a horrible train collision occurred on a snowy January night. A freight train and a passenger train collided, resulting in fifteen deaths. The station master had been absent from his post, leaving his parrot, Poll, alone near the station telephone. The bird, having often observed the master placing calls, mimicked the station master's voice and shouted 'Send down 113' into the receiver. Following the instructions, a freight train proceeded, meeting the passenger train head-on. The mystery of the unauthorized order remained unsolved for months until the station master caught the bird repeating the command into the telephone.
“Looking up he saw Poll sitting on the shelf above the telephone and heard her call out in her shrill voice: 'Send down 113.'”
While likely an anecdotal 'tall tale' popular in the yellow journalism of the time, the story highlights the era's reliance on fragile, analog communication systems and the catastrophic consequences of human (or avian) error in the age of steam.
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