Birds soar closer to heaven than any other creature. Imagine spending most of your life soaring high above the rest of creation…how majestic! How awe-inspiring! But, then, birds also eat worms and make an awful mess when you least expect them to….
Like mankind, birds have the ability to be both glorious and absurd. We have beautiful birdsong and parrots talking whatever nonsense we teach them. Excuse us if we mix those two aspects—the glorious and the absurd—together in this chapter, with the balance just ever so slightly tipped in favor of the absurd, of course!
A man went to an auction with no particular idea of what he wanted to buy, but when he saw the next lot was a beautiful parrot he decided he had to have it. After showing the bird to the crowd, the auctioneer put a cover over its cage and the bidding began.
The man had no idea how much a beautiful parrot like that was worth, but every time he made a bid someone else bid higher. More and more convinced that this must be a valuable bird he kept increasing his bid until he won.
A little concerned by the amount he had just paid, the man drew back the cover from the cage. “It is very beautiful,” he said to the auctioneer. “But after paying all that money, I just hope it can talk!”
“Of course it can talk,” the auctioneer said. “Who do you think was bidding against you?”
A woman liked to feed the ducks at her local pond, but after a while it occurred to her that, no matter how early she came, the ducks were always out and paddling about before she arrived.
“Yeah,” said a fellow duck-feeder, “that’s because they get up at the quack of dawn.”
A duck waddled into a fancy restaurant and hopped up onto a table. Pretending she had seen it all before, the waitress brought it a menu. The duck pecked out a selection, and she brought its meal.
Once it finished, the waitress presented the duck with its check.
“Put it on my bill,” it said.
Q: What do you get when you put four ducks in a box?
A: A box of quackers.
Q: Why do seagulls live by the sea?
A: Because if they lived by the bay, they would be bagels.
Q: What is black and white and black and white and black and white and black and white?
A: A penguin rolling down a hill.
Q: Which birds spend all their time on their knees?
A: Birds of pray.
Q: Which bird is the rudest and most annoying of them all?
A: A mockingbird.
Q: How does a bird with a broken wing manage to land safely?
A: It uses a sparrow-chute.
Q: Which bird is always out of breath?
A: A puffin.
Q: How do the birds know whether they should go out in the morning or stay in their nests?
A: They watch the feather forecast.
Q: What do you call a bird that lives underground?
A: A mynah bird.
Q: How do you know that owls are more clever than chickens?
A: Have you ever heard of a Kentucky-fried owl?
The owl woke up one morning and discovered it had lost its voice. That was okay, though. The owl was a laid-back bird—and it didn’t give a hoot.
It was a scorching day, and two red-breasted birds decided to bask in the sun. So they lay down on the cool grass. Just then a mommy cat walked past with her two kittens.
The cats were feeling the heat as well, and the kittens mewed, “Mom! We’re hungry!” and “Mom, we’re too hot!”
The mommy cat looked over at the birds on the grass and said, “I know! How about some baskin’ robins?”
A magician was part of the entertainment on a cruise ship. Knowing that the audience would be different each week, he recycled the same tricks over and over again.
There was only one problem: the captain’s parrot saw all the shows. After all, a cruise ship captain’s parrot doesn’t get the same excitement as, say, a pirate’s parrot. Having seen the tricks countless times, the parrot began to understand how the magician did them. Once it understood that, it couldn’t keep it to itself. The parrot would shout things out in the middle of the show like, “Look, it’s not the same hat!” or “Look, he’s hiding the flowers under the table!” or “Hey, why are all the cards the ace of spades?”
The magician got angrier and angrier—but he couldn’t do anything. It was the captain’s parrot, after all.
One day the ship had an accident and sank in the middle of the ocean. The magician spluttered to the surface and grabbed hold of a floating table. Seconds later the parrot fluttered down and landed beside him.
They glared at each other but, even in this situation, they refused to speak to each other. This went on all day and all night. But when the sun rose the next morning, the parrot gave up.
“Okay, okay!” it screeched. “I give up! What did you do with the boat?”
Q: What do you call a canary that forgets to fly south for the winter?
A: A brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr–d!
Q: What do you call a duck that is always getting into trouble—and doesn’t care? A: Mallard-justed.
Q: Why do hummingbirds hum?
A: Because they can never remember the words.
A man walked into a pet shop. He had a good look around, but nothing caught his attention—until he noticed the parrot. It wasn’t that the parrot itself was unusual; what was unusual was that the parrot had a length of string tied to each of its legs.
Curious, the man asked the shopkeeper about the pieces of string.
“Ahh,” said the shopkeeper, “just watch this!”
He tugged on the string attached to the parrot’s left leg. It raised that claw from the perch and said, “Hello, handsome! Hello, handsome!”
“Cool,” said the man.
“Yeah,” said the shopkeeper. “And watch this!”
He tugged on the string attached to the parrot’s right leg. It raised that claw from the perch and said, “My name’s Pete! My name’s Pete!”
The man was really impressed by this. “And what happens if you pull both strings,” he asked.
The parrot looked at him and said, “I fall off the perch, you idiot!”
A mail carrier had a package that required a signature. He knocked on the door and got no answer. He knocked again, and a high-pitched voice said, “Come in!”
He walked into the hallway but didn’t see anyone there. “Hello!” he shouted. Again the voice said,
“Come in!” So he walked through to the kitchen—and found himself face-to-face with a snarling Rottweiler.
The mail carrier backed up against the wall and started whimpering for help. Still the voice repeated, “Come in!” He carefully edged his way along the wall, with the Rottweiler barking at every step, until he could see through a door into the next room.
There he saw a parrot in a cage. When it saw him, the parrot said, “Come in!”
Realizing he had put his life in danger because of a parrot, the mail carrier hissed, “Can’t you say anything except ‘Come in,’ you dumb bird?”
The parrot thought for a minute. Then it shrugged and said, “Sic ‘im!”
Jake took his seat on the plane—then realized there was a parrot in the seat next to him!
Before he could get over his shock, the parrot shouted at the fight attendant, “Hey you! Get me a Coke!”
The fight attendant brought the parrot a Coke. Jake tried to get her attention, but she hurried of.
A few minutes later the fight attendant passed by again. The parrot spit some Coke into the aisle and shouted, “This is flat! Get me another one, you good-fer-nothin’! And bring me some crackers!”
Again Jake tried to ask for a drink, but the flight attendant was too flustered to notice him. She very quickly brought the parrot another Coke—but forgot the crackers.
“How did you ever get a job here?” the parrot yelled. “You’re useless! Get me my crackers and get them now!”
Jake decided that rudeness was obviously the way to get results, so before the fight attendant left he yelled at her, “Yeah! And bring me a Coke, too. Right now!”
The fight attendant bustled away in tears. Then two of her male colleagues came back. They grabbed Jake and the parrot, took them to the back of the plane, opened the door, and threw them both out.
As they hurtled toward the ground, the parrot fluttered over to Jake. “Wow, man!” it said. “For someone who can’t fly—you got a lotta nerve!”
A parrot and a pelican went out for dinner. The pelican behaved itself—but the parrot was shocked by the size of the bill.
Chuck had always wanted a parrot, but he made the mistake of buying one from a buddy with a challenging vocabulary. Once he got it home and encouraged it to talk, Chuck soon realized that the parrot not only had a terrible attitude, but almost every word out of its beak was an expletive! Those that weren’t expletives were still incredibly rude.
Chuck thought some love and kindness would help. He talked regularly to the bird, hoping it would copy some of the words he used. He even played it soothing music in the hope of calming its temper. But the parrot kept flying around, pecking holes in things, and cussing as loud as it could.
One day Chuck found it in the kitchen trying to push the window open with its beak. He tried to grab it before it could escape, and the parrot flapped him with its wings, pecked at his hands, and called him several rude names.
In desperation Chuck held the parrot’s leg with one hand and reached out to open what he thought was a cupboard door with the other hand. But it was the refrigerator!
Chuck opened the door, stuffed the parrot inside, and closed the door again!
Ten minutes later, having cleaned up all the feathers, gathered himself together, and realized he had put the parrot in the fridge, Chuck opened the door.
The parrot stood, looking very contrite, on the shelf.
“I am sorry if I might have offended you in any way with my language and actions. I most humbly ask for your forgiveness, and I will make every attempt to correct my behavior.” Chuck was astounded at the bird’s change in attitude. He held out his arm, and the parrot jumped onto it.
“Just one more thing,” the parrot said. “May I ask what the chicken did?”
“Wow! Look at the speed of that!” said a hawk, twisting its neck to watch a fighter jet fly by.
“Pfft!” snorted the other hawk, distinctly unimpressed. “You would fly as fast as that, too, if your tail was on fire!”
Q: Why did the Pilgrims eat turkey on Thanksgiving?
A: Obviously they couldn’t get the moose in the oven.
Q: What do you get if you cross a parrot with a shark?
A: An animal that talks your head off.
Joey was really sad because his pet canary had died.
“What happened to it?” Sam asked.
“Flu,” sighed Joey.
“Bird flu?” asked Sam.
“Nope,” said Joey. “It got out the window and flew into a truck!”
A lady was walking down the street to work and saw a parrot on a perch in front of a pet store.
The parrot said to her, “Hey, lady, you are really ugly.” Well, the lady was furious! She stormed past the store to her work.
On the way home she saw the same parrot, and it said to her, “Hey, lady, you are really ugly.” She was incredibly ticked now.
The next day the same parrot again said to her, “Hey, lady, you are really ugly.” The lady was so ticked that she went into the store and warned she would sue the store and have the parrot put down. The store manager apologized profusely and promised he would make sure the parrot didn’t say it again.
When the lady walked past the store that day after work the parrot called to her, “Hey, lady.”
She paused and said, “Yes?”
The bird said, “You know.”
Q: Where do eagles meet for Coffee?
A: In a nest-café.
A man bought a parrot and was disappointed that it didn’t talk. So he went back and asked the pet shop owner for some advice.
“Oh, it’s probably just bored,” the owner said.
“Buy it something to distract it or excite it.”
So the man bought his parrot a mirror. Still it didn’t talk!
He went back to the pet shop and the shopkeeper recommended a cuttlefish shell for the parrot to peck at. The man bought it and took it home—but still the parrot didn’t say a word.
The next day he bought it a ladder. The day after that, he bought it a bell to ring.
A week after he’d bought the parrot, the man went back to pet shop.
“Has it started talking yet?” the shopkeeper asked.
“Well, yes and no,” the man said. “It looked in its mirror, it rang its bell, it ran up and down its ladder, it pecked at its cuttlefish, then it said a few words and fell over—dead!”
“Oh my!” said the shopkeeper. “Well, at least it spoke. Tell me, what did it say?”
The man shook his head and sighed, “It said, ‘Doesn’t that shop have any birdseed?’”
A woman saw a Frenchman walking down the street with the most beautiful parrot on his shoulder. She just had to go over and say something.
“Wow! How beautiful! How elegant!” she gushed.
“Where did you get him?”
“In France,” said the parrot. “There’s millions of them over there!”
“My husband races pigeons for a hobby,” said one woman to the other. “It’s good that it’s just a hobby and he doesn’t do it professionally because he never wins!”
Billy went into the pet shop and asked for a big bag of birdseed.
“Well, how many birds do you have?” the shopkeeper asked.
“None,” said Billy. “That’s why I need the birdseed—to try and grow some!”
Sheila bought a parrot, but it wouldn’t talk. She didn’t mind too much because it was still a lovely bird, so she fed it and cared for it. About a year after she bought it, Sheila gave the parrot an apple. The parrot bit into it and then spit it out.
“Sheila!” the parrot screeched. “There’s a maggot in this apple!”
“Wow!” gasped Sheila. “You can talk! Why didn’t you say something before?”
“My dear lady,” the parrot replied in an English accent, “I never needed to. Up until now the food has been perfectly adequate!”
Jake had been looking everywhere for a parrot that could talk. But he couldn’t really afford one. In the end he settled for a woodpecker that knew Morse code.