Charley Bird

Charley Bird

I’ve written about Charley Bird in my spent-my-own-money, self-published book, “Maybe It’s Just Me.” But if you have not bought the book, and I highly recommend that you do not. You can read about this wonderful bird right here.

The other day I posted that people have basically one of two pets, a dog or a cat.  Well years ago, we had a bird.  Pop brought home a parakeet, as a present for my mom.  He was named Charley Bird.

Charley Bird was a most remarkable bird.  He had an assortment of toys which he played with when he was out of his cage, and he was out of his cage often. 

He flew around the house and loved talking to himself while staring in a mirror.  If you wanted to get Charley Bird back into his cage, you messed with the squeaky toy inside his cage.  Charley was very protective of his cage and would fly instantly and climb back in.

Did I say Charley Bird would talk to himself? 

Oh, yes, this bird could talk.  He had at least one hundred phrases that my mom carefully taught him.

“Good morning.”

“Hello, my name is Charley Bird.”

“Hello sweet little bird.”

“I love you.”

Mom would have Charley Bird sit on her shoulder while doing the dishes and other chores.  Charley would get up close to her mouth as she repeated a new phrase for him to learn.

Now Charley was really cool, but I wanted Mom to teach him more masculine sounding phrases.

Before I left for college one year I suggested to my Mom.

“Teach him something parrot-like…maybe… ‘Awk, Awk, Pieces of eight!’”

“Oh, like a pirates parrot?”

“Yeah, that would be cool.”

So Mom decided to teach Charley Bird this new phrase. 

Now Mom somehow thought Charley Bird needed to hear perfect diction when learning a new phrase, and she spoke very slowly like you would to anyone who did not know the language.  

This bird could learn and imitate the sound of a spoon dropping, but mom was convinced that to learn a new phrase she needed to speak slowly and with perfect diction.

I returned home for Thanksgiving Vacation anxious to here Charley Bird speak his new, cool, pirate accented  “Awk, Awk, pieces of eight!”

Instead I heard this, in a clear slow sweet perfect diction mom-voice,

“A  w  k.   A  w  k.    p I e c es.    o f.    e I g h t.”

Mom was very proud of Charley Birds new phrase.  At first I was disappointed, but he was mom’s bird, and I grew to prefer Charley’s slow sweet perfect diction mom-voice delivery. 

Mom was not a pirate.