The Taste of Honey

The Taste of Honey

I was walking through the local park, my preferred way to escape the emptiness of living with my unadventurous and generally boring parents, and of not having a girl friend, and finishing my first year of university. As I sat on the flat round remains of an oak stump, I heard a voice calling to me. It had to be calling me, as there was no one else nearby. I could not even see the one that was calling to me, even though I stood up and I turned around twice in a complete circle. 

No one had ever called out ‘hi honey’ to me before. It was not long after the first call, that I heard her (it definitely sounded to me like a female voice speaking) calling out the same charming greeting to me once more. Again I looked around me, but could not see her anywhere. Was I imagining this? I did not think so. My imagination is not that powerful.

I then heard the flapping of wings, followed by a rather large bird, a parrot, landing on my right shoulder. It looked me directly in my eyes and repeated her words to me “Hi Honey”. I could swear that she knew what the words meant. I wondered how you know when a parrot is smiling, but I somehow thought that this one was smiling. I wished that I had a cracker or some other parrot food to feed her as a reward for her sweet words to me.

I walked and looked around to see whether the parrot’s owner was here in the park. But I saw no one approaching me, calling to or reaching out for the bird. One person walked over to us, and told me what a lovely bird I had, and even told me what kind she was, a Yellow-Headed Amazon. She also told me that its population was decreasing significantly, so I had to be careful with this one..

As I got to the sidewalk on the outskirts of the park, other people stared when I walked towards them, but said nothing. Some of them even backed away from the two of us, because of the large size of the bird. She often spoke to me, not being restricted to calling me ‘honey’ but ‘sweet heart’ and ‘pretty bird’ as well.

What should I do? Well, the pet shop is on my way home, so I decided to go there, being careful not to lose the bird as I opened the door. I asked the people working there whether they had heard of anyone losing a parrot recently. They said that they hadn’t heard of that, but there was a small group of parrot owners that regularly bought bird food, a few even cages from them. I thought then it might be a good idea for me to buy some parrot food for my new friend. When I made the purchase, and I offered her some, she took it rather aggressively, but not violently. Her beak was huge and I believe could have cut off one of my fingers if she had a mind to do so. That thought did not restrict me from feeding her by hand – which remained completely intact after the feeding.

George, the store owner was a compassionate man, who asked for my phone number. He told me that he was going to call his parrot owner regular customers to find out whether one of them had lost a parrot. He knew that one of his customers had a Yellow-Headed Amazon. He just could not remember at the time, which one it was. But he would be able to find out.

Honey the Parrot Meets My Parents

When I arrived home with Honey (the name I had given her after we left the pet shop), my parents gave us a look midway between surprise and shock. When I told them the story, including going to the pet shop, they seemed to calm down a bit, especially after I said that I would keep her in my room until the owner would be found. My father then walked up close to me and handed me some money, and said that if I had to buy a cage, something that surprised me a bit. I wondered whether he was influenced by the fact that Honey had said ‘hi honey’ to him when she first set her eyes on him. It was a term that I suspected that my mother used to address him with, whenever she wanted or needed something from him. This, of course, is the kind of thing that a young son with no girl friend might assume to be true.  I was probably wrong about this, at least some of the time.

The next day, a Saturday, at eight o’clock in the morning, I received a call from George, saying he had found the bird’s owner. So Honey and I left the house and went back to the pet shop. When we got there we saw a young woman with tears in her eyes as she looked at us. Honey addressed her with what I believed was the loudest ‘hi honey’ I had heard her say to anyone, even me.

The young woman said this to me. “Sam, my boyfriend always addressed me as ‘honey’ rather than by my name, ‘Sarah’. Honey picked up on that quickly, so with a much louder voice she would call out HONEY, when she was in my company, which was almost all the time at home. That made Sam angry, especially as Honey never addressed him, unless you would count squawking.” 

“Almost a week ago, Sam ‘released her into her natural habitat’, as he called it. I suspect you can understand that we broke up after that. He no longer lives in our apartment. I do not miss him at all, but I certainly missed Honey. I am so glad that she met and became attached to such a nice man like you, and that you rescued her.”

Before I could reply to her compliments, she asked me “What do you say to having dinner at my place tonight? I would have taken you out to a restaurant, but I did not want to separate from Honey so soon after she came back into my life with your kindness”.

That was when my relationship to two sweet females began in full force.