Vicki Hearne - Animal Happiness: Moving Exploration of Animals and Their Emotions--From Cats and Dogs to Orangutans and Tortoises

H uman philosophers tend to talk strangely when the topic of parrots comes up, as if they believe their stature depends on the diminished stature of parrots. I would tell you some of the bizarre things I have heard otherwise rational philosophers say about parrots, but it would probably be actionable if I did so in print, and they would deny it anyway. A human philosopher thinks that no one notices when she starts putting on airs.

A parrot doesnt think this way. You may say that a parrot puts on airs. Well, a parrot does. But a parrot knows hes putting on airs; hes not like a blue jay that way, its completely different. A blue jay gets all mixed up in his thinking because he starts believing his own PR, but a parrot is more cool-headed than that, which is why you can win an argument with a blue jay and never with a parrot.

Of course, some philosophers know this about parrots and dont try to argue with them. John Locke, for example, in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding , tells a story about a parrot summoned by an apparently philosophical prince who was wondering how smart parrots were. The prince asks the parrot where he comes from, and the parrot tells him, and he asks who he belongs to, and the parrot says to a Portuguese, and he asks what he does at home. The parrot replies that he takes care of the chickens. The prince is taken aback: You take care of the chickens? Parrot: Yes, and Im very good at it, too. And he makes the Chuck four or five times that People use to make to Chickens when they call them. It seems that a chaplain who was present would never from that time endure a Parrot, but said, they all had a devil in them.

I can see why that chaplain was upset. The parrot had coolly kept control of the exchange, turning what started as a condescending IQ test into a conversation on a topic of his own choosing. That is very much like my general experience of parrotseven a cat isnt as good at keeping control of a conversation as a parrot is. Locke has better sense than to try to argue with a parrot, even from the relatively safe distance of his massive book, and tells the story without much comment.

There is a parrot living in a bar in TijuanaI have this on excellent authoritywho causes people to order more drink than they intended by sidling up to them, cocking his head, and asking, Can you talk? And there was Napoleon, a parrot from Brazil, who put on airs at Riversides Mission Inn from the time in 1907 when he was given as a gift to Frank Miller, the inns founder, until 1956. Napoleon held his own with more dignitaries than any other parrot in history, so Riversiders say, including Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Albert Einstein, William Howard Taft, Teddy Roosevelt, Emperor Hirohito, and Carrie Jacobs Bond. All of them attempted in various ways to introduce their own topics of conversation, but Napoleon prevailed over what were for him wits no better developed than a blue jays, and he was not thwarted until June of 1956, when the Mission Inn was taken over by Benjamin Swig, a hotelier from San Francisco.

I have heard a rumor that Swig attempted to deny that Napoleon was really talking, that Swig read French philosophy, people such as Descartes, and would say that parrots only appear to be talking because they are possessed by devils, and as a result, on July 3, 1956, exactly one month after the arrival of the San Franciscan, Napoleon died of a heart attack, thus, I think, maintaining his southern Californian refusal to let usurpers from the north ruin the conversation. I can see how it was, how frustrated Swig must have been when he tried to engage Napoleon about the beauties of the Golden Gate Bridge. Napoleon died with his conversational boots on. He was buried on Mount Rubidoux, and is commemorated in tiles on the second floor of the Mission Inn, outside the room called El Loro.

Napoleons story makes me suspect that human resentment of parrots, especially all the talk about their having devils in them and so on, springs not from their startling ability to utter human phrases but from their aggravating refusal to let you choose the topic. You know how it is. You go up to a parrot, and hes probably in a cage and youre not, so you feel pretty superior, maybe you even think you can feel sorry for the parrot, and you ask the parrot how he is, and he says something gnomic like, Sos your old man, or How fine and purple are the swallows of late summer. Then the parrot looks at you in a really interested, expectant way, to see if youre going to keep your end up. At first you think youve been insulted, but a parrot is too cool to throw insults around, unlike a blue jay, and once you notice that, you start trying to figure out what the parrot means by it, and there you are. You havent a prayer of reintroducing whatever topic you had in mind. Thats why philosophers keep denying that parrots can talk, of course, because a philosopher really likes to keep control of a conversation.