The eleven-years' maid might have placed a bid for Jerry's affection, had she not been deterred at the start by Agno, who reprimanded her sternly for presuming to touch or fondle a dog of such high taboo.
What delayed Agno's plot against Jerry for the half-year of the monsoon was the fact that the season of egg-laying for the megapodes in Bashti's private laying-yard did not begin until the period of the south-east trades.

And Agno, having early conceived his plot, with the patience that was characteristic of him was content to wait the time.
Now the megapode of the Solomons is a distant cousin to the brush turkey of Australia.

No larger than a large pigeon, it lays an egg the size of a domestic duck's.

The megapode, with no sense of fear, is so silly that it would have been annihilated hundreds of centuries before had it not been preserved by the taboos of the chiefs and priests.

As it was, the chiefs were compelled to keep cleared patches of sand for it, and to fence out the dogs.