REMEMBERING WHEN: The potty-mouthed parrots

By Keith Schell

Back in the day, you had to take your amusement where you could find it; not like today, where there are a million funny and amusing videos at your fingertips on your phone or laptop to be viewed at a touch.

Our late father, along with many other people he worked with at the time, found an amusing distraction from the workaday world one summer that brought a smile to everyone’s faces and was usually good for a chuckle every time anyone who experienced it ever thought about it.

Because of the long-term physical and emotional aggravations of working in a factory, Dad would sometimes come home from his job aching with repetitive stress pain or fuming with workday frustration. A good natured person at heart, he would usually need half an hour or so after getting home to cool down and recover before he returned to his old normal self again.

But one summer, Dad would usually come home with a little smile on his face. Sometimes at dinner, Dad would be thinking about something that happened at work that day and begin to chuckle.

When we finally asked him what was so funny, he told us with a grin:

At our father’s workplace, there was a small row of houses adjacent to the right side of the factory property from the passing street. Each of those residential properties was separated from the plant property by a row of chain-link fence and some company green space. All of those residential backyards faced that side of the plant behind the chain-link fence, and in one of these backyards was a stand for a large birdcage.

And when the birdcage was brought out and placed on the backyard stand that summer, it always contained a couple of old Macaw parrots.

When the weather began to warm up that summer, the owner of the two parrots would often put them in the cage, bring the cage outside in the late morning, and place the cage on the backyard stand so the birds could get a little fresh air.

There was a large tree in that particular backyard that provided shade and overhung onto the factory green space. When lunchtime rolled around, some of the workers, our father included, liked to leave the plant and eat their lunch outside in the green space by the chain-link fence in the shade of that backyard tree, especially if there happened to be a nice breeze blowing that day.

And one day, while some of the guys were eating their lunch in the shade of the tree by the fence, the two old Macaw parrots in the backyard cage looked at each other and suddenly began swearing like a couple of drunken sailors!

Apparently, it was quite the thing to hear for all those who were present. It was so unexpected and so funny that everyone eating lunch under the tree burst out laughing at the two cantankerous birds who were cussing each other out!

When the workers got back from lunch, word quickly spread amongst the employees about the two potty-mouthed parrots in the backyard of one of the houses adjacent to the right side of the plant.

And the next day at lunch, a couple more guys came out to the tree to sit on the grass, eat, and listen to the parrots swear. And the next day at lunch, a couple more guys came out for the same reason. And so on, and so on.

By the end of the summer, the two old Macaw parrots had built up a considerable noontime fan following of workers who enjoyed eating their lunch while sitting in the grass under the shade of the tree and listening to the parrots’ X-rated backyard banter.

And when the lunch break was finally up, everyone who enjoyed the little blue show would usually go back to work with a smile on their face.

As fall began, the weather would start to get too cool through the day to put the parrots out for fresh air around noon like always, and to everyone’s disappointment, the shows would finally end for the summer. And the next summer, the parrots were no longer there. To my knowledge, no one ever found out the reason. Perhaps the owners just got tired of their pets putting on a noontime show for the neighbouring workers. Or perhaps the people sold the house and moved, taking their profane pets with them. Or perhaps the two old Macaw parrots were just re-homed or simply passed away. We will never know.

But for a few months that one particular summer, the swearing old neighbourhood parrot duo brought a lot of lunchtime amusement to a group of workers who dearly needed it.

Talk about a couple of dirty birds!