"Pat, you rascal! You've been stealing eggs again!" The black and white bird with egg yolk on his bill looked fearlessly at the scolding human being. "That's right!" he replied cheerfully.

Patrick loved eggs. He would peck a hole in the shell, slip the lower part of his beak inside the egg, and clamp the upper part down on the outside. Then he would carry the egg to some perch where he could enjoy it undisturbed.

"We must take some magpies with us to Arkansas," the Phipps family had said when they moved from Colorado. They had been taming magpies for years. So Pat and Mike were taken along to the new home in Arkansas. The trip was too hard on Mike, and he died. Pat lived for several years and kept the family laughing at the tricks he played.

Pat, like all the Phipps' family magpies, learned to talk. His tongue was not slit. He just learned from listening to the family, and he seemed to understand what he was saying.

Although Patrick had a cage out by the hen house, he was usually allowed to go free. He liked to be in the house, but that was against the rules. Since no one would let him in, he found ways of getting inside. He would wait until one of the boys came in with an armful of wood. Then Pat would perch on the wood and ride in. He knew that a boy with both hands full couldn't brush him off.

One day Mrs. Phipps heard Pat call, "Come here! I want to tell you something!" She went out to see what he wanted but found that he wasn't talking to her at all. He was peeking over the edge of the house looking at a spider. "Come here! I want to tell you something!" He called to the spider. But the spider either didn't understand or knew that it was wiser not to come!

Another time the family heard Pat bark like a dog and call, "Come here!" They found him chasing a squirrel in a tree. Every time the squirrel tried to get away Pat would peck him. Pat wanted someone to come and shoot the squirrel, so kept it on the side of the tree next to the house.

A neighbor had come to visit and was ready to go home. As he turned his pickup truck around he backed quite near the house and heard someone say, "Watch it, Mister! Watch it!" He looked out the car window and there sat Patrick on a block of wood, trying to keep him from backing too close to the house.

Patrick liked to take a bath in the pond. One time he went to deep in the water, and his soaked feathers made it difficult for him to get out. After that he was always afraid that he would get too far out and drown. So he wanted some member of the family present when he took a bath. He would call, "Lilly Gay! Come here! I want to tell you something!" When she came he would go down to the edge of the pond, get in the water, and call ; "Watch it!"

Pat was always calling Lilly Gay, saying that he wanted to tell her something. She complained that he never had anything to tell her, and often he stood back and laughed at her when she came.

One day a neighbor brought his hunting dogs over. Everyone was paying a great deal of attention to the dogs and none at all to Patrick. This made the magpie mad and he flew off. Soon from up on the hill a voice called the dogs by name and whistled to them. Up ran the dogs, but found no one. While they were still running around in circles, perplexed, Patrick flew back to the house, laughing at the joke he had played on them.

The crows would gang up on Pat and fight him, and he had no way to defend himself. Then one day he noticed the dog running through the field barking at a rabbit. When the crows heard the dog barking they flew away. So the next time the crows came to fight Patrick, he barked at them. They thought there was a dog nearby and flew off in a hurry.

The little pigs liked to be on the back porch, much to the disgust of the lady of the house. "Get off the porch!" she said, shooing them off with the broom. A little later the pigs were back and she heard Pat telling them, "Get off the porch!" But he had no broom, so they paid no attention to him.

Pat liked to go hunting with the old mother pig. He sat on her head while she rooted in the ground, and if she turned up a bug or worm he would swoop down and grab it before she could get to it. Then when he thought there was no more food for him in that spot he would fly to another and call, "Pig! Pig!" in a voice so much like one of the family that the pig would go and root there.

When a new road was put in nearby, Patrick seemed to think the bulldozer was an Overgrown pig. He sat on it and swooped down to get bugs and worms it dug up. He had a good time eating, but when it moved on, he followed it and got lost. Finally, after weeks, some neighbors reported that he spent a good deal of time around an old barn. So some of the Phipps boys drove the pickup over after him. As soon as he saw them coming he began talking to them, but he wouldn't come down out of the tree where he was perched. One of the boys had to climb up and get him. The magpie was so glad to he back with his family that he chattered all the way home.

On the fourth of July the children shot off firecrackers. Pat thought he would shoot one too. So he found a burned match and a firecracker that had failed to explode. Soon someone noticed him holding the burned match in his bill, rubbing it on a rock, trying to light it.