Giving The Bird...And Getting A Wail (standard:humor, 575 words)
Author: RickToo11	Added: Sep 16 2000	Views/Reads: 4391/4	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Even gifts with the best intentions can sometimes go awry.

Giving The Bird...And Getting A Wail by Rick Compton, c98 

For many birthdays, my wife wanted a bird. She wanted a parrot, but the
only birds suitable to northern climes are penguins, and they can’t 
talk. Sure, they dress well, but she wanted a clever bird that could 
learn, perhaps, to quote a little Sanger, or sing a verse of some early 
Beatles tune. 

We’d moved South, and it was a just a few days before her birthday.
Perusing the pet ads for parrots, I eyed an appropriate offer. “Talking 
parrot,” it said. I expected this to be followed by “Dem-Fl,” but it 
was instead followed by “Hand-raised.” Hmm, I thought, this bird won’t 
have to raise his hand to talk in our house. The ad’s best part: “Free 
to good home.” We have a good home, I thought -- cable, pool, two ovens 
-- so we should qualify for the financing package. 

I called, and the bird’s owners were delighted, but they insisted I pick
him up that day, as their teen-aged daughters were coming home from 
boarding school, and they didn’t want to subject the girls to the 
trauma of a departing parrot, whether to a good home or not. 

“Before they went away to school, the girls were very close to the
bird,” the father explained, hesitated, and lowered his voice. “In 
fact, he learned to talk from them.“ 

Cool. Boarding school girls have good vocabularies, I thought. Maybe the
parrot could sing The Wiffenpoof Song. 

At home, I uncovered the bird to my wife’s delighted coos. “He’s so
beautiful,” she said. “Can he talk?” 

Can he talk, indeed. “He’s preppy,” I boasted. I turned to the parrot. 

“Martha’s Vineyard,“ I coaxed. “Lord and Taylor.” 

Nothing. My patience evaporated, and I said, “You’d better do what I
say, if you know what’s good for you!” 

The bird’s beak opened, and a horrible sound oiled out. It was the
plaintiff, petulant, modulated wail of an adolescent girl whining 
“Aaawwwww, mmmmooommmmmmm.” Again. And then again. And again. Aw, moms 
-- rising and falling like a revving dentist’s drill, like a banshee 
caught in a shredder, like the ear-rending echo-y screech of fire alarm 
in a vacant gym. 

The parrot had learned by imitation this one sound: the detestable,
repetitive plea of a whiny, spoiled child. It is an historically 
powerful sound. Some anthropologists believe that it was this sound the 
Inca’s used to justify sacrificing young virgins. It may have been Jon 
Benet Ramsey’s last words. 

The daughters apparently had two different voices, because the parrot
would “Aaawwwww, Mmmmooommmmmmm” in two alternating timbres. The voice 
we came to think of as the older daughter’s was in the key of D sharp 
fragmented, and would scratch your eyeglasses if too close. The younger 
daughter must have suffered some adenoidal condition because, at the 
end of her wail, there was a “Huncchhh, huncchhh” sound, like the jaws 
of life cutting though steel and upholstery. 

That night, we finally got the bird to shut up by putting a thimble of
curacao in his water dish and wrapping his cage in a furniture pad. The 
next day we placed our own ad in the paper, and offed the bird to a 
Haitian with a lean and hungry look. We felt no remorse as we walked 
into Pier One to select a carved balsawood parrot. 

It is a much quieter bird. And we don’t have to change its newspaper.


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