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^ Oronp Weekly Times, Wednesday, September 6, 2000 - 7 It's a dog, it's a duck No it's a potatoe Doreen Lowery: dug out of her garden in Kirby last weekend! ARTHUR BLACK A PARROT IS A MAKS BEST FIEND You're familiar with the classic Monty Python parrot skit, right? Where John Cleese comes into a pet shop with a dead parrot and tries to get his money back? It's a very funny skit except for one thing - the premise. What pane, rationally rationally operating human would ever complain about having a parrot that died? A dead parrot is the only kind of parrot I'd ever consider consider owning, I know some people love the birds, but they suffer from a disadvantage: they never met Sydnëy. Sydney was the name of the parrot I once, it is to laugh, | owned. At least that's what 1 thought the shop owner called him. I believe now that it was a mispronun ciation Sidney/Satan was a scarlet macaw Durante, beak ..by Jimmy vardrobe by Pimps R Us. He was gaudy - all flam ing blue/green of 'Satan'. red plumage with accessory feathers and beady black-pupilled stoplight-yellow eyes that never, seemed to blink. Sydney was - I have to admit it - beautiful, in his own Boy George way. He was also the Pet From He'll. "Does your parrot talk?" curious guests would inquire as they peered at Sydney, slouching like Brando in the Wild Ones, resplendent and insouciant on his perch. Talk? No. Sydney did not 'talk'. ' Sydney screamed. Louder than a jackhammer. More ■ piercingly than a Skilsaw striking a spike. More excruciatingly than a bevy of F-18's in mid flypast. Sydney was loud. He was also a tyrant. 1 He transformed mÿ feisty border collie into a shuffling Yowsahmutt • the very afternoon afternoon they met. 1 never did learn what he did to my cat, but the poor beast went out-, side to live in the hedge short ly after Sydney arrived. She still wouldn't come out six weeks after Sydney departed. Sydney's beak was more powerful than a set of bull clippers. He ate the spines off seven volumes of my Encyclopedia Britannica and severed the 'phone chord in three places. , Fie chewed up the door trim and uprooted a jade plant onto the living room carpet just, I believe, to watch it die, In his brief gang bang of my life that parrot parrot managed tç> trash my home, traumatize my family and estrange us from the next door neighbours. My dictionary defines 'parricide' 'parricide' as the killing of a close relative, but for me, parricide is an act I would have performed, performed, with relish and bare ... hands' on a certain bird had not Fate, in the form of Sydney's former owner, taken the beast, away. Oh well. Could have been worse, 1 suppose. Could have been Flounder. Flounder is a RainbovV Lorie currently living living in the Humane Society Animal Shelter in Charlotte, North Carolina. He's petite, gorgeous....and he's got a mouth on him like Blackboard . the pirate. This is a truly foul fowl. He uses the S-word. He uses several B-words. He uses the F-word so often it's boring. Flounder has also picked up some charming routines somewhere along his checkered checkered flight path. He lures . newcomers to his cage and then shrieks "Get away from me, you %*& A #+*@%-!" He's turned simple defecation . into a form of military assault. He caii nail you with Gattling gun guano from three feet away. His most embarrassing party trick? Waiting until anyone in the shop sits down, whereupon Flounder makes a sound like passing gas and follows it with "Excuuuuuuuuuse ,me." Reminds me of a story about another foul-mouthed parrot, purchased by an unwitting Saskatoon dowager. It wasn't until she got it home that the lady realized the bird was... .tainted. It sang ribald songs. It told dirty jokes. It screamed swear words that Eddie Murphy doesn't know. Which was a problem, what with the vicar coming to tea that very afternoon. The lady tossed a bedshdet over the birdcage; the bird sang four unexpurgated verses . of Mademoiselle from Arm entières. The lady screamed at 'the parrot to hush; the parrot told the lady to perform an unnatural act. In desperation - for she could hear ijhe vicar's footsteps at the door - the woman snatched the parrot and threw him in the freezer. A half- hour later, after the vicar's departure the woman opened the freezer and found the parrot parrot standing there, shivering slightly, but decidedly amenable. "Ate you alright?" she asked.j "Fine, ma'am, thank you for asking." Said thé parrot humbly. 'But you seem so quiet" said the dowager. "Is there anything wrong?" "Nothing at all ma'am" said the parrot. "I couldn't be happieir." . "Bijt 1 was just wondering - could you tell me...what it was the turkey did?" 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