The Bird's the Word
Colleen McKie
It’s 6:30 in the morning and my phone is ringing. I stumble out of bed, pick it up, and am greeted with the dial tone. I look over at the birdcage hanging in a stream of early morning light. I then hear my cell phone, our old phone, a dump truck backing up and our microwave. All mimicked perfectly. I bet you are thinking parrot, right? African Gray? Or maybe a conure? Well, you’re wrong. All the ring tones are coming from 4-year-old Dufus, our rescued European starling.
The adventure started mid-June of 2003. I was out shopping and when I arrived home, my boyfriend greeted me at the door with a whispered, “Be quiet or you’ll scare it.” Uh huh. A stray kitten had been hanging around a few days earlier and I got ready to lecture Jason on the fact that with three cats already, we certainly didn’t need another. I walked into the living room, opened my mouth to speak, and stopped dead in my tracks. There, on the TV, in a small bunny cage was, well, I had no idea. It was gray, round and fluffy. And it was breathing.
“A bird,” Jason announced and told me how he had been in the back yard gardening when it hopped over to him.
But a “bird” was all he could tell me; he had no idea what kind. Through some Internet searching, we discovered it was a European starling. And it was about five days old. We weren’t sure what to feed it, but it was gaping, mouth wide open, and screeching at Jason. So we figured it was hungry. Birds like worms, right? I mean every cartoon I have ever seen with a bird, involved it plucking a worm out of the ground and chowing down on it. So Jason went out and got a worm, showed it to the baby bird, and stood back waiting for it to gobble up its feast.
We stared at the bird. The bird stared at the worm.
Jason then had the bright idea that maybe if the worm was wriggling on the baby bird’s head, the little fella might be enticed to eat it. So he plopped the worm on the bird’s head.
We stared at the bird. The bird stared at us.
The worm wriggled. I thought that bird is such a dufus. And the baby had a name.
Through more Internet research and the help of an animal rehaber friend, we got the basics down. Moist dog food about every half hour. No need to worry about timing ourselves: Two seconds late and Dufus would squawk. Over the next few months, baby Dufus turned into teenager Dufus. And if you think bird adolescence is easy, guess again. He became moody and demanding. He’d squawk his head off to be fed, I’d go to feed him (he was still being hand fed) and then he’d refuse to eat. Until I put him back. Then he’d scream for food again. During this lovely game there would be poking, food throwing, and temper tantrums. But eventually he began to eat on his own and things calmed down.
Jason announced one day, after doing some more Internet research, that starlings have the ability to talk, like parrots. I thought okay, that’s kinda cool. It could start talking as early as six months old. Well, our little guy must have been really smart, because it started when he was four months. On Halloween, he started making weird sounds. Since the natural song of a starling is a high-pitched screech, I really didn’t think anything of it. Until I started to make out the weird sounds.
“Pretty birdie!”
In my voice, exactly. See,not only do starlings repeat words and sounds they have heard, they mimic them. I always tell him he’s a pretty birdie in that annoying talking-to-babies, sing-song voice I always swore I would never use. And now he was saying it himself. Exactly like I do. (For the record, I really don’t think it sounds like me, although my husband and mother swear it does and it freaks my father out.) And since he has uttered those two words, the bird has not shut up.
From sunrise to sunset Dufus talks. Non stop. He has a fairly large vocabulary of words and sounds. Birds like the higher pitched tone of women, so most of what he says are things I say. (Most of which I can’t repeat here. Dufus loves to curse.) He also loves phones: Over the years he has acquired several ring tones. He can also dial my parents’ number.
This is a typical Dufus phone conversation:
Ring, ring (home phone, cell, phone, parents phone, old phone or cordless phone)
The tones of dialing my parents phone number.
Click of answering the phone
“Hello? Uh huh. Alright. Okie dokie. Uh huh.” Laughing. “Okay, okay then. Bye bye.”
Click of hanging up the phone.
When not imitating a telemarketer, Dufus likes to boss our dogs around with commands of “sit,” “stay,” “lay down” and “shut up,” always telling them they are “good girls.” He also loves whining like our husky, then telling her to be quiet. He goes through stages where he has favourite words, phrases, or sounds. Right now he loves meowing whenever one of our cats meows or when I meow. Or when he feels like it.
He can also call Jason and make my husband come running faster than I can.
And he is very sympathetic. If I have a cold or an allergy attack, he is sneezing and coughing right along with me.
But I’m not the only one he imitates. My husband orders a lot of electronics on the Internet and spends some time tracking them, calling the 1-800 numbers to make sure he is getting the best deal. He starts most conversations with “Hi this is Jason McKie”. So does Dufus now.
And the happier he is, the louder he talks. Sometimes he’s more entertaining than the TV. Except at 6:30 in the morning when I think the phone is ringing. I’d ask him to be quiet, but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t do any good. He’d just laugh at me. In my voice.
Photo Credits: All photographs associated with this article courtesy of Colleen McKie (permissions granted).
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