"Grip" immediately reminds me of the pet raven owned by Charles Dickens in the early 1840s, while he was writing _Barnaby Rudge_. He incorporated his raven into the novel as the title character's pet, a talking raven which would later become the model for Poe's literary fowl. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnaby_Rudge http://www.ushistory.org/oddities/grip.htm