Les Parrots

An eccentric friend of mine went to a high class pet shop and bought two parrots which he displayed proudly in the grounds of his house out in the country. He was told that one of the parrots was a fluent talker, whilst the other was rather shy and had never said a word; albeit he showed promise and needed a little care and attention.

Once he had the pair home he approached their enclosure and started repeating inane words like "Pretty Polly ... who's a pretty boy ..." and so on, in the hope that the parrots would repeat what he said; which is what parrots are supposed to do.

To his surprise, the talkative parrot replied in French "Vous êtes un imbécile, monsieur!"

My friend was totally surprised, not so much at the insult, but at the fact that the parrot addressed him in French. Parrots are supposed to speak in English aren't they?

Before my friend could utter another word, and plenty came readily to mind, believe me, the French parrot started reciting Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables".

On and on he continued reciting from Victor Hugo, Molliere, Racine, Camus and others, so well read in French literature that parrot was. My friend was totally mesmerised at this even though he could not understand a word the parrot was saying.

He tried to get the other parrot to speak, but to no avail. The silent one remained ever so.

The problem was that my friend could not tell apart which parrot was which, they were so identical. So he could not proudly tell his friends he has a French talking parrot if, as sometimes happened, neither would oblige. So he rang the pet shop for advice.

The pet shop owner said that the French speaking parrot was the male, and he was very amourous. All that my friend had to do is creep on the pair late at night and when he spied the French parrot saying to the other one "Je t'aime mon amour!", all he had to do is to put a collar on him to distinguish him as the talking male.

This my friend did quite successfully and he collared the male parrot as advised.

A few days later my friend had a few visitors to come and see the parrots, and amongst them was the local Parish priest. As the group approached the birds' cage the male parrot said to the priest in a French accent "Alors, mon ami. I see zey caught you at it too!"

To which the other parrot said in a Spanish accent "Hola señor!"