A FEATHER FOR CHASE

TO show that banks are not so stuffy as some people think, Manhattan's Chase National Bank for several years has run a series of folksy ads ("Why don't you talk to the people at Chase?"). In one of the ads, Chase chattily likened its investment servicemen to a bunch of "professional nestegg sitters."

Into Chase's nest last week flew a real bird, as big as a turkey and with the menacing face of a gargoyle. It was an ornithological curiosity from Siam, a rufous-necked hornbill which had escaped from a Manhattan pet shop. It flapped around Wall Street's skyscrapers all day, as clerks and secretaries craned to watch its antics. The bird stopped on Chase's 28th-floor ledge long enough for a Times photographer to get there for a closeup, which the Times published next morning. In less time than it takes a check to clear, Chase's admen took half-pages in both the Times and Herald Tribune to reproduce the likeness of their feathered visitor ("Somebody told me to talk to the people at Chase").

Not since the midget sat on J.P. Morgan's lap did a stunt create so much talk in Wall Street. All day Chase was deluged with congratulatory phone calls for its showmanship; United Fruit Co. borrowed the idea for an ad of its own (bananas had been used as bait to recapture the bird). Even the rival National City Bank, where Rufous tarried briefly before his subsequent recapture, put in a call to Chase. Wistfully, National City's Public Relations Vice President Granville S. Carrel observed: "I wish that bird had stayed with us."

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