Does a Parrot Just Parrot - or Create Poetry?

AC's own ACe photographer, Morag Mortimer-Smythe (here) in his series of poems about AC writers turned his poetic spotlight onto me (here). Actually, most of the poem was about my African gray parrot (check my avatar). Morag's poem made me think about how my parrot, Dorian Gray Parrot or Dory, lives up to his literary name. He does more than just parrot, repeat wrods mindlessly. He turns his unique vision onto his world and its inhabitants to create utterances using words that he knows, creating words when he needs to.

Years ago, I wrote an article about Dory, "ET in My Home" (here) that has gotten responses from about a dozen countries. It includes photos, a sound clip, and probably more information than you would ever imagine wanting to know about a bird. Dory is a timneh African gray parrot, smaller than the better known Congo African gray (with a bit of color on his beak, rather than the solid black beak of the Congo, and with a more muted red tail than the Congo), as you can see in a slide show, "A Day in the Life of an African Gray Parrot" (here ).

The poet's vocabulary

Although African grays are the best talkers of all parrots, I have never tried to teach Dory any words. I let him learn the words that he needs to talk about topics of interest to him, for example, food, weather, and friends.

He is quite eloquent about food. If he does not like what I offer him for dinner (he has a seed mix available all the time, but he joins us whenever we eat), he will ask for chicken or a hambone (two of his favorites). Yes, he eats meats; in the wild, parrots mainly have a plant-based diet, but they will also take insects, small reptiles, rodents, and even birds.

He talks about the weather, since when "It's nice out there," he can go onto the screened porch. In another article (here) I revealed his creation of a weather-related word hurricat, a portmanteau of hurricane and cat.

Yes, cat. He talks to ("Hey, cat, give me a kiss!") and about ("That's a pretty cat there!") the cats in his life. He correctly identifies them as cats, asking them, for instance, "Are you hungry? Are you a hungry cat?" But, he will ask me, "Are you hungry? Are you a hungry bird?" He often hears his human friends refer to him as a bird and to the cats as cats, but we don't generally refer to each other as human beings. So, to meet his linguistic needs, he decided that we are birds. Coming from him, that is quite a compliment.

That illustrates something important about his vocabulary development. I don't think he has ever heard us referred to as birds, so he is not just "parroting." He is using language creatively. How many words does he know? I could no more answer that than I could tell you how many words I know. He knows enough, and he learns or creates more when he needs them.

"Cookie bath"

Dory had never had anything to drink but water and orange juice, since dairy, alochol, and caffeine are not good for birds. One day, I had some apple juice, probably the first time I had had apple juice since Dory had moved in. I offered him some, and his response made me wonder if instead of apple juice, it might have been hard cider.

He flapped his wings, chirped, and continued to drink more and more. Finally, almost breathlessly, he exclaimed, "It's cookie, baby! It's cookie bath."

Cookie bath? Had my African gray parrot gone crazy? I believe he was drawing on his vocabulary to express a new experience, apple juice. He likes cookies, which are sweet, and apple juice is sweeter than orange juice. His bath, sharing a shower with me, is important to his hygiene and social life. (In the slide show, I have a photo of him in his towel after a shower.) So, cookie bath identified the strange new beverage as a sweet liquid. (If you think showering with a parrot is exotic, read about my showers with a parrot in a tub full of orchids, here.)

Many times daily, he requests cookie bath, which we serve him in a shot glass. He has learned that requesting cookie bath will get us to come to him, whether he wants his favorite beverage or not. He has expanded cookie to be a sort of generic expression of pleasure, as in "Mighty cookie, darling, mighty cookie!

Dory's love song

One glorious central Florida spring day, Dory was enjoying being on the screened porch, when he suddenly threw back his head and sang in his not very musical voice, "Bird is love! Bird is love!" Since then, that little song (which I cannot trick him into letting me record) has become his often-repeated theme song; although he whistles, he has never sung anything else.

Again, that is obviously not an expression he is repeating. What does it mean? I think it reflects his feelings for the feline and human members of his flock. In my earlier article about Dory (here), I tried to get into his world-view and his flock-view and recalled a time when he used the word love with eerie precision.

By the way, as you notice from my quotations, Dory peppers his conversation with honey, baby, sweetie-pie (or kitty-pie for one of the cats). My favorite is my darling, as in "Michael, come here, my darling." It makes me think he is channeling my beloved writing teacher, Marguerite Young, whom I wrote about here, who wrote the great American novel, Miss MacIntosh, My Darling.

Morag's poetic license

There is one thing that turns my affectionate, poetic little friend into Dory the demon, and that is a telephone. Years ago, people would call and ask to speak to Dory. I'd hold the telephone to him as the person on the other end talked or whistled to him, while he cocked his head sideways, as if he were Nipper, RCA's puzzled dog, in gray-feathered drag.

Now, if he sees me even holding a telephone, he goes into a rage, lets out a distinctive shriek that he never uses in any other situation, and attacks me. He has attacked a telephone, with his death-to-telephones shriek, and thrown it off the table when I was not even in the room.

I appreciate Morag's spotlight, although it fell more on Dory than on me, and then on Dory in an activity (talking on the telephone) that he would never engage in. I also appreciate the comments.

One person, who commented on the poem and then read my original article, asked me if I have plans for the reality that Dory will most likely be the last surviving member of his flock. I don't have. But, if some day, you are greeted by a little gray bird asking for "cookie bath, baby" you'll know what he wants.

Source: eleven years of membership in Dory's flock