A visit to the garrulous parrot

In the newspaper it was mentioned that one parrot on Long Island can say over three hundred words. I wanted to see it for myself, so yesterday one of the boys drove me there. The weather was extremely cold, and we had to drive a long distance.

The man who owned the parrot was unbearable and his wife was only a little bearable. They were screaming at the bird as though it were a child. They were trying to get it to say something. But out of its three hundred-word vocabulary not even one word was coming.

So we wasted nearly two hours and did not hear a single word! The bird may not talk for strangers, but in front of the owners — who brag about it in the newspapers — the parrot says three hundred words!

25 January 1982