Wild parrot chase

A British charity has given an amateur birdwatcher five thousand pounds sterling to hunt for an Australian parrot that is probably extinct. It’s money well spent in my view. The problem with parrots is knowing for sure whether they're really extinct or just lying low. A month ago one of my females said:

“Yo, Bananas, do you think the purple-crested peckerhead has died out? We haven't been woken up by that motherfucker for ages.”

“By golly, you could be right!” I exclaimed. “No wonder I've been sleeping like a lark. God willing, the curse of the midnight squawker has been lifted!”

And then, of course, on that very night, it was caw-bloody-caw as I slumbered in my hammock, interrupting a dream about my favourite episode of Little House on the Prairie. Thankfully, a resourceful monkey silenced the featherbrained fowl with a well-aimed plum stone, causing it to parachute to the ground in a daze. I marched to its landing spot and warned the parrot that the next time it disturbed our sleep its beak would be embedded in toffee.

Now I don’t know anything about this Australian bird, but it’s obviously high time someone got on its case. Its haunts should be monitored and its intentions should be exposed. If you let a parrot play dead in the Great Australian Bush, it’s only a matter of time before it emerges from its hiding place to carry out a sneak attack on some innocent wombat. I just hope they’ve given the birdwatcher enough money to do a thorough job. These expeditions have many expenses – a room at the inn, the cost of equipment, hiring Aboriginal porters, buying drinks for the local Sheilas, etc, etc. They should wire him some more if he runs out of cash before getting a good sighting.

It is possible, of course, that the parrot really is extinct, making everyone connected with the mission feel like a great big ninny. I hope they’ll quickly get over the disappointment. Extinctions are Mother Nature’s way of cleaning house, replacing uppity guests who’ve overstayed their welcome with promising newcomers. Dinosaurs, dodos and unicorns once thrived in pastures green, only to yield their respective positions to the warm-blooded, the airborne and the hornless. If the parrot is truly gone, it surely made the most of its precious time on Earth by screeching its head off at dozing marsupials.

Many humans don’t realise that their species was once close to extinction. Aeons ago, on the African plains, it was your relative Homo Erectus that stood proud, while the newly-evolved Sapiens breed teetered on the brink. We gorillas thought you were done for and collected your artefacts as remnants of a doomed culture. Then came the great Wanga-weed infestation. Your hominid relatives smoked the herb addictively and got so high that they lost interest in procreating. The men of Erectus lost their erections and the species quickly died out, allowing humans to move into their tastefully decorated caves.

And so, my hairless primate cousins, the path of Life on Earth is crooked, contorted and capricious. A lucky break can rescue a species from the gaping abyss of doom, and propel it onto the pouting pinnacle of prosperity, before it is finally sucked into the swirling vortex of oblivion. Enjoy the ride.

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Dog Day Afternoon

News arrives of a man who got beaten up by his girlfriend for trying to force her into a threesome with his dog.

The couple were showering together when he called the hound to join them, in spite of the woman’s clear warning that this would be viewed as an unfriendly act (not to say casus belli). Heaven knows what possessed the fellow. Perhaps he thought she would change her mind on seeing the animal’s eager face and long wet tongue. She didn’t, and the man ended up in hospital with a dislocated shoulder for his matchmaking efforts.

This sorry incident shows what can go wrong when a man’s best friend really is his dog. He takes the pooch bowling and buys it a beer, and before anyone can call a shrink he’s invited it to copulate with his girlfriend, quite literally treating the woman like a bitch. Even if she had acquiesced, I doubt the mutt would have enjoyed it much. It may well have gone through the motions to please its master, but a woman’s body probably seems like a rubber dinghy to a dog – too smooth to get a good grip of and too easy to puncture in the wrong place. The absence of a bitch-in-heat smell wouldn’t have helped either. You can’t expect a hound to be a demon in the sack under those conditions, no matter how horny it is.

Now I’m not opposed, in principle, to humans having pets. It’s all a question of choosing the right animal and having the right sort of relationship with it. An American woman once asked me if gorillas made good pets. “Not for humans they don’t” was my reply. It is always a mistake to share your home with an animal stronger than yourself, as it inevitably leads to confusion about who is the master and who is the pet. Even very young gorillas don’t know their own strength where humans are concerned. I remember a judo black belt saying he’d like to wrestle with an infant female in my band who was making eyes at him.

“Put on a jockstrap first,” I advised. “She doesn’t know what testicles are, and if she thinks yours are gooseberries you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”

He decided, on reflection, to settle for a handshake.

The best sort of human-pet partnership is exemplified by the 18^th century pirate and his parrot. The bird is not held captive and can fly away whenever it wants. It only opts to stay perched on Blackbeard’s shoulder in return for high-quality grub from the cook’s table and a prime view of the action. It can also speak its mind freely and contribute its two cents at crew meetings. Incidentally, it is a myth that a parrot will only parrot the views of its owner. These shrewd little creatures always mimic the phrase that will have the most impact.

My friend Smacker Ramrod, the circus vet, once kept a parrot in his trailer. After many weeks of trying to get it to say things like “Pretty Polly”, the bird stayed resolutely mute. Then, quite unexpectedly, it spoke its first words when Smacker was with a woman who’d agreed to spend the night with him. Just as they were starting to undress, the parrot got their attention by clicking its tongue.

“I love your boobs!” it squawked.

Smacker’s delight at hearing the bird talk was tempered by the fact that it had stolen a favourite line he was about to deliver himself. The girl laughed and said “Thanks”. She then reflected on what she had heard and stopped undressing.

“Hang on a minute!” she exclaimed, giving Smacker the evil eye.

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