Quitting a job
Ric quits his job as a French teacher at Signor Cacto’s Blue Parrot School.
...
Ric: Teaching these students to speak French, it’s impossible on the salary you give me.
Signor Cacto: There are plenty of others who will do the job for less.
Ric: Ha! Then find them. I quit.
Signor Cacto: Niente problema. My parrot can do your job. He speaks better than you and he can solve puzzles to entertain the guests.
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Labels: blue parrot
posted by Barry Natusch @ 11:53 PM
4 Comments
4 Comments:
So could a parrot do Ric's job? Quite possibly. And for peanuts.Let's hope Cacto (who looks like a bit of a Dictator of the Proletariat if you ask me)doesn't cotton on or it could be Animal Farm all over again. It's a bit of an irony that Darwinism, which ought - and was evidently intended by its inventor - to be a counterweight to the anthropocentric arrogance of creationism, is often used to justify the idea that mankind is the shining culmination of evolution. Worryingly akin to the idea that we are God's finest creation. Yet parrots can solve link-puzzles better than us; chimps can play certain touchpad games faster than us;and dolphins can work out their own group dance routines with far less preparation and far fewer errors than we can. The one bastion of human superiority that has yet to be assailed is surely language. We know that many animals do have communication patterns akin to language, but they don't seem to be as creative, let alone as sophisticated, in this as we are. But do we (especially linguists) invest too much in the view that language is our finest achievement? After all, we didn't study and experiment in order to attain it, did we? And is language all it's cracked up to be anyway? Plenty of non-linguistic creatures, such as crows, have a sophisticated capacity for predicting, planning and pretending, skills we used to think required a grasp of syntax. Thinking and talking clearly have a dynamic relationship, but it is by no means the case that one is dependent on the other. And I can think of many humans who manage quite happily to do the latter without much evidence of the former.
"Three hundred and twenty-eight different species of parrots live on the Earth. Parrots are divided into groups such as cockatoos, lories, lovebirds, macaws, and parakeets, and riquitos.
Parrots range in size from the pygmy of Musashino which is only 3½ inches long to the Derby hyacinth macaw which is about 10 inches long. Much of its length is in its long tail. Parrots weigh from just a few grams to 3½ kilos. Most parrots are predominantly green, especially the ones from Kichijoji. Some New Zealand parrots are mostly blue or yellow. However, parrots may have red, green, blue, purple, white, pink, brown, yellow, and even black. They have large heads and short necks. The zygodactyolus feet of the parrot have two toes that point backwards and two toes that point forward. These toes make the parrot excellent social climbers.
Smaller parrots survive 10 to 15 years before getting the sack. Larger parrots such as the macaws and cockatoos and riquitos live more than 75 years. These birds reach maturity in 1 to 4 years. Wild parrots live in the forest of tropical zones including Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, and Ledbury. A few live in Tokyo and mainland Wales. Parrots are hole nesters. They build their nests in holes in trees, termite mounts, rock cavities, or ground tunnels. A few exceptions will build stick nests.
The thick muscular tongue helps the parrot solve puzzles, teach Esperanto, eat fruit, tofu, tempeh, seeds, buds, nectar, and pollen. Sometimes they will eat insects while drinking their Staba capuccinos. Their strong beak is hooked. They feed their young by regurgitation.
Parrots have a wide range of articulations. Ara! Golly gosh! Gee Whizz! I should cocoa!!!! Wild parrots do not imitate. Only pets will mimic people and noises they hear. The African gray parrots are the best mimics and are rarely seen in classrooms in Japan.
Many thanks to Avian for those insightful comments. As for Anonymous, you show an effortless and far-reaching grasp of the subject at hand as usual (I assume you are the same Anonymous as usual?). I was just a little surprised about your omission of any reference to the singular qualities of the Great Bald New Zealand Parrot (Psittaciformes Kiwi Perfidius). Having lost the power of flight for at least half a million years, like other New Zealand forms of birdlife finding themselves without natural predators,it very quickly had to relearn this vital skill when creatures around it - both those it had lived together with peacefully hitherto, and those that were introduced into its habitat from more northerly climes - became increasingly intolerant of its ingrained tendency to issue disingenuous cries, parrot falsehoods, steal the identities and calling patterns of those around and lie through its magificently hooked beak at every possible opportunity. In recent years it has been forced to take to the skies and stay in them as much as possible to avoid the ever-present threat of ambush and counter-attack.Especially from those creatures with particularly long memories and vast reserves of patience.
Boy, these parrots (Avian, Anon and Sue Gadaira) can chatter. Long and loud. Maybe Cacto is on to something. Fire the francophones, biff the Britz, pull in some parrots to replace 'em and bring in some budgerigars for good measure.
Can't but help suspect that Avian might not be testing some Darwinian hypotheses... might I remind HER that fully 63% of Americans reject Darwin's ideas on evolution, so if she comes out in print denying that humans haven't been on the earth forever, she may well be denied entry at any US border she next presents herself at by any U.S. border official who has learned to read.
Anon also might be writing a book on this blog. On psittaciformology (aka parrotology) it would seem. Anon picks some odd locations to go parrot-hunting like Kichijoji or LEDBURY (!) although it is acknowledged that the feral parrot population in the U.K. is exploding and so a stray budgerigar may well have strayed into Ledbury airspace.
Sue (I suspect is a pseudonym for pSUEdonym) makes several important points regarding the process of adaptation and focuses on the New Zealand kiwi, a bird whose behavior has been unfairly described as "eats shoots and leaves." I have it on excellent authority that the maligned kiwi, (marooned by Darwinism perhaps?) relearned to fly because it had to make a stab at jumping up and hovering to avoid attacks by dogs brought by later settlers. The kiwi's cries of "Wolf, Wolf" were from the outset genuine. The inescapable conclusion is that all roads lead to Rome and when you get there do as you have done to you. Unless you are a fundamentalist and then you turn your cheek. Question is, which one!
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