They Taught Me to Speak

The family of humans that I live with taught me to speak and to understand their words when they spoke carefully and slowly to me. What they did not know was that my learning did not end with what they deliberately taught me: “Polly want a cracker? Who is a pretty bird?” and other such parrot clichés. I listened carefully when they were in the living room, half of which had become an aviary, and learned much more than they ever suspected that I knew. To keep their suspicions down, I tried never to say in their presence words that they had not deliberately taught me. There were certainly times when I wanted to swear when one of the other birds pooped in my cage, or stole my food, but I had decided against it. I have no desire to be on Facebook or any other such media showing how ‘cute’ parrots are. The family showed them to us, and strongly hinted that we should do something that could be shown on such media. We are not freaks.

I wish that I could talk to the other birds in other than body language, and calling out their names. But they are limited in what they can say and what they understand. I’ve tried, but with no luck at all. Maybe it is because they are much smaller than I, a Yellow-Headed Amazon, am. I hate to say this about my best friends, but their brains are a lot smaller than mine as well. Still, they are good company, friends that share the aviary with me. My life would be very lonely without them.

Sometimes I sneak in a few swear words when I speak, for which they typically blame each other, particularly when I say those words loud, and repeat them a few times in a row, and they have to bribe me with food to shut up. It is a good way to gain some extra food. The son, Ralph, is usually the one blamed for my behavior, even though the parents swear with the same words just as often as their son does, maybe more often.

The boy has two friends, Brad and Bill, that I do not particularly like.  I think of them as ‘bad eggs.’  They don’t like me much either, making comments about putting me in the oven and cooking me for dinner, and telling the boy that he should get a ‘real pet’, such as a dog or a cat. They never call me a ‘parrot’. They only ever address me as ‘bird.’ “Hey bird, swear for me” I have taken to calling them ‘mammals’. “Hey mammals, shut up.” Obviously, I only think those words, not speak them out loud, although I have really wanted to do so.

They even did some that I would be blamed for. When Ralph was not in the room they pushed over a lamp in the aviary and loudly claimed that “the big bird did it; the big bird did it.’ I really wanted to say “the nasty boys did it, the nasty boys did it’. I was blamed by Ralph’s parents for the broken lamp, who then confined me in my cage for a week. While I love my cage, I really need to fly too. It is what we birds do.

The Day of Destruction

We parrots have in the aviary, works of art that we like a lot. On a small table table in the corner of the aviary there are three coloured glass statues of parrots: one yellow, like my head, one green like one of our Quaker parrots, and one blue, like the other one of our Quaker parrots. We, of course, knew that these glass statues were not real parrots, although idiotic comments have been made by human visitors to our room, saying such nonsense as “Don’t you worry that the birds will think that the bird statues are a potential threat, and will attack them and knock them over?” Of course, I wanted to say in reply, “Does that mean that you mammals knock over statues of other humans when you see them as some kind of threat to you?”

One day when Ralph was outside the room, probably going to the bathroom, he does that a lot, I can hear the flushing, Brad and Bill entered the aviary, and knocked all three statues over, all three of them breaking.  Brad picked up a piece of the head of the yellow parrot statue, and shoved it into his right pocket. I wanted to attack them. Ralph heard the sound, and burst into the room, looking in shock at the broken glass statues. His nasty friends looked at me, and then pointed at me, saying: ‘The big bird knocked them over. We tried to stop him, but he was too fast for us.’

I could not remain quiet this time. I let out a loud squawk, that got their attention and with my most forceful voice yelled out ‘The nasty boys did it. The nasty boys did it. Look in Brad’s right pocket. He took a souvenir.”

Ralph’s parents then entered the room. They had no doubt heard my words, and wondered who spoke them. They were shocked by what they saw. Ralph’s father looked at both me and Brad, trying to decide what to do. Ralph said to his friend. “Empty your pocket Brad.” Hearing many words that I had said when no other human was there, he appeared to believe that what I was saying was the truth. How else would I come out with the words that I used?

Brad said ‘No’. You can’t believe him. He is just a dumb bird.” Ralph replied, “A dumb bird could not have said what he said. Empty your pocket, Brad.” Then his father supported him, and, of course, me, by saying “Empty your pocket, Brad.”

Brad tried to avoid revealing what he and Bill had done by heading for the door. Ralph’s father grabbed him by the right arm, while Ralph reached into Brad’s right pocket, and took the piece of the statue out. His father let go of Brad’s arm, and told him to “leave this minute,”, which he and Bill quickly did.

Then the three members of the family all turned and looked at me, and Ralph asked the question that they all wanted answered: “I think we need to have a conversation with you about how you can talk the way that you do.”

We spoke for a long time. And they promised never to film our conversations.