I’ve always been fascinated by birds that can mimic human speech. I’ve never studied the phenomenon, or know the science behind why some birds choose to imitate sounds – I just find it amusing! I reallyfind it humorous when a bird learns how to mimic an appliance tone (like a microwave’s timer, for instance) and then starts making that sound when someone is cooking, causing them to keep checking to see if the meal is done.
But this short article is about parakeets that talk. I had parakeets for a brief period in my early 20’s. They never said anything other than “tweet”, or whatever noise it is that parakeets make. I suppose I didn’t have the patience to actually work with them either, which could be a major part of the equation. Apparently my mother did have that gift of patience, as I remembered a couple of stories that she told me about a parakeet she and my father had.
I hadn’t been born yet, so she had a little more free time to spend on “projects”. One of these was trying to teach the parakeet to speak. My mother had been told that some sounds were more challenging than others for those little birds to master; the letter “Z” was perhaps the hardest to mimic. So you can forget about Mom trying to teach the bird something simple – she set out to do the impossible!
I suppose I should mention that parakeets don’t always speak on command or cue. Sometimes they’ll repeat parts of what you say, while other times they’ll just sit there making you feel like a fool. Sometime they’ll chatter and spit out other words or phrases instead of the one you’re trying to teach them. But it also seems that the smart ones absorb everything you’re willing to offer them, even if they don’t spit it right back at you.
So began the training to teach her little bird the phrase “Have you seen the zebras in the zoo?”
She worked on that phrase for months with no results. Occasionally one of the words might be spoken at some random moment, but the phrase was never connected, let alone uttered in its entirety. She kept trying, and the bird never gave her the satisfaction of even trying to repeat the phrase.
This was in the 1950’s, and of course the Beat Movement was in full swing. One day, pretty much after my mother had finally thrown in the towel, the little bird was sitting on its perch and started bobbing its head up and down, and moving a little bit from side-to-side. Then with perfect timing and rhythm like one of the Beat Poets of that era, it said:
“Have you seen the zebras, zebras, zebras
In the zoo, zoo, zoo?
Have you seen the zebras, zebras
In the zoo? Have you?”
My mother was dumbfounded by this display of meter and rhyme, although I’m sure her pride of accomplishment was short-lived, as the bird never said the phrase again. Ever.
Be assured that everything you say around a parakeet is being recorded in its little bird-brain, even if you never hear it speak those words. There may come a day when you suddenly learn that they know more words than you realized, and sometimes they can even match the phrase to fit the moment.
Yes, timing is everything. My father was sitting in his chair reading the newspaper one evening when the parakeet was out of its cage. It suddenly took flight and landed on my father’s head, and then worked its way down to his reading glasses. The parakeet perched on the glasses’ frame and then bent over to look my father directly in the eye through one of the lenses and then said, “That son-of-a-bitch has four eyes!”
They NEVER heard THAT one before… and never again, either!
Most people’s first impression of hearing a story like this would be, “Yeah, right.” But I really don’t doubt that my mother’s stories about the bird are true, if only because of something I witnessed when I was eight years old. Again the operative phrase is “timing is everything”.
We were in Sausalito, a small waterfront town on the northern peninsula of the San Francisco bay, having dinner in my uncle’s apartment. They owned the building and had the largest apartment in the building, but it was still small by today’s standards. They had a table in the kitchen where most of the meals were eaten. It was one of those tables from the mid 1900’s that had chrome legs and sides; the table’s surface was made from something similar to Formica, although my memory is a little fuzzy about those details.
What I do remember is that my aunt always had a parakeet, and the cage was over the sink in a bay window. She would always try to teach the bird to speak, although it was usually very simple phrases like “pretty bird” or “hello”. Dinner had commenced, and seated around the table were my uncle and aunt, mother and father and my grandmother, who lived in a house literally on the other side of the garden fence.
People were talking, and the conversation was relaxed and pleasant. At one point though, everyone seemed to run out of things to say and a hush fell over the table. At that moment, the bird flew from its cage and landed right in the middle of the dinner table. Everyone’s focus was suddenly on the little feathered intruder who promptly crapped on the table, said, “excuse me” and then quickly flew back to his cage!
Yes, timing IS everything! The bird could have said nothing, and have just been shooed away from the table. It could have pooped and said, “Polly want a cracker” and that wouldn’t have been amusing at all. But to say, “excuse me” after committing that offense – this was, perhaps, the most magical, amazing and hilarious thing an eight-year-old boy had ever witnessed! I laughed myself silly until my dad had to tell me to get a grip on myself.
Apparently this little parakeet had never uttered that phrase before, or after, his little foray to the dinner table. But because I witnessed this “event” with my own eyes and ears, I am not quick to discount other people’s tales of animal oddities. And isn’t it amazing how sometimes the silliest of moments are some of the most profound memories we carry with us the rest of our lives? I remember that family dinner all because of a little bird… a “polite” little bird at that!
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