During the quiet hours in his pet store, my grandfather patiently trained goldfinches to pull a string. This particular finch is known in Dutch as a puttertje, a name that refers to the drawing of water from a well. Males that could both sing and draw would fetch a high price. For centuries, these little colorful birds were kept in homes with a chain around their leg, pulling a thimble up from a glass so as to fetch their own drinking water. One such finch is featured in the seventeenth-century Dutch painting central to Donna Tartt’s novel The Goldfinch.
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