During our last outing, we discussed birds on postcards who were not chickens or storks. We covered ostriches and pelicans and doomed ducks and so forth. But, of course, we could not use up our whole supply of birds in one column. Today, I thought we might consider some of the birds who talk back to us.
Lots of birds can be claimed to talk to us, of course, from the turkeys who tell us what to do at Thanksgiving (gobble) to the poor doctor who was haunted by a flock of ducks who kept questioning his credentials (Quack!) to the classic definition between a rooster and an old maid (the rooster says Cock-a-doodle-doo and the old maid says any dude’ll do.)
It may be cheating to include artificial birds like the cuckoo in the clock in this discussion. But it does get us into another paragraph where I don’t dredge up any more fine old jokes like the ones in that last paragraph.
The classic bird talking back is the parrot, of course, which could be counted on to come up with something unexpected. Alas, I don’t have any postcards dealing with the perennial problem of parrots whose language was learned from the sailors who brought them home, and had to have their cages covered when children were in the room.
On postcards, their most common function was the sarcastic and disconcerting comment. How birds with beaks could sneer so completely is a mystery to me, but maybe it was the way they said it.
This unpleasant chatterer draws his inspiration from the old pop song “The Bird on Nelly’s Hat”, which kept remarking “You don’t know Nelly like I do” whenever a suitor spoke of her virtue and fidelity.
This artist took us on a wild journey with a man and his parrot, in which the weary traveler gave out the straight line and the parrot got the laugh.
Speaking of laughs, do you know the one about the parrot on the cruise ship. The one with the magician? Where the punchline was “Okay, Mac, ya got me. What….” Oh, you do. Kinda figured. You’re like that.
How about the one about the plumber who came to fix the sink? Fine. Be that way. I should have replaced you with a parrot weeks ago.
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