Pretty Polly had been marked for death in her mistress’s will, but the parrot was not gone yet.
When Mrs. Ottilie Stock died in June 1910, she left behind a set of unusual final requests. Among them was the instruction that her parrot be chloroformed, bringing the bird’s life to a sudden end along with her own household affairs.
But Polly was still alive.
The bird continued to be fed and cared for while Mrs. Stock’s daughter, Miss Elizabeth Stock, challenged the will in court. If the daughter succeeded, the order against the parrot might be thrown out entirely, along with the rest of the strange and bitter provisions Mrs. Stock had left behind.
Pretty Polly May Not Be Killed As Requested
Pretty Polly may not be chloroformed. Despite the wish for the sudden termination of Polly’s career expressed in the last will of her mistress, Mrs. Ottilie Stock, who died June 18 last at her apartments in the Brunswick, the parrot is still being fed and cared for.
The death sentence thus deferred may be entirely set aside, as Miss Elizabeth Stock, daughter of the deceased, today filed a caveat asking that the mother’s will be set aside and its mandates nullified.
Miss Stock says her mother at the time the will was made was incapable of executing a valid contract, and that undue influence was brought to bear on her.
Mrs. Stock was the mother of one of the victims of the Maine disaster in Havana Harbor and received a pension for the killing of her son.
In her will she left the daughter only $1, with the proviso that if the bank account would not stand such a drain, the daughter was to have two kitchen chairs, two pails, one broom and two wash basins.
The testatrix, after requesting the chloroforming of the parrot, asked that all her family pictures and letters to be interred with her. She left her remaining estate for a monument to mark her resting place.
Source: Evening Star. Washington, D.C. July 11, 1910.
