Published Articles
By Dr. William R. Morrow

“The Parrot Gift”

I can always count on my Michigan cohort, Simon Lyman, to bring me a good Christmas story. He was down for the holidays and told me this tale about a bickering couple who received a parrot as a Christmas gift. He said it was true legend, but with Simon you never know if he was just protecting his sources. How this bird, named George, came to live with the Knaves and how it saved their marriage, I will pass along to you.

As the story goes, the parrot had originally been the pet of a veteran sea captain who grew old, and was unable to take the parrot with him to the Seaman's rest home. Since the Ed and Mavis Knave were distant relatives, they inherited the parrot, along with some Chinese chests and other collectibles from the captain's travels.

Now I tell you the best part: While the parrot was in the captain's possession, it would sit on the captain's shoulder, and make insightful pronouncements just as its master was about to take a wrong turn, whether in his life or on the high seas. It just knew what was right. Lest you think that parrots could not be this smart, recent university bird research is confirming their intelligence. Parrots are actually proving to have large brains, and are among the smartest of birds. They are able to correctly name colors, do simple math, and learn to use abstract memory. And it was obviously true of this gift parrot. Need I say that George, with his smarty- pants comments, was received with mixed feelings?

It seems that one day, not long after George had come to live with them, there occurred a particularly tense time in the state of the Knave's marriage. There was wild talk about splitting up. Harsh words were hurled between the spouses. Anger reached into the high decibels. Frankly, things did not look good. Ed thought that his wife was insulting his mother when Mavis said she didn't care for the fruit cake they had received as a gift from Mother Knave. Mavis in turn thought her husband was accusing her of having low-brow taste in holiday delicacies. You could imagine how it escalated from there, into trivial points of arguing, until finally George saw or heard something he didn't like about all this, and gave a very loud, “COOL YER JETS!”

This surprised the warring couple. Mavis, who had been standing near the fish tank, was so startled that she took a sudden step backwards and began to lose her balance. She looked a little like she was doing a dance, and finally tripped and fell backwards onto the couch. Ed, who had been observing all this, began laughing, doubling over with amusement so much that he bumped his head on the coffee table. It was such a shock that he forgot what he had been arguing about. This naturally changed the tense atmosphere into one of pleasant exhaustion. Ed and Mavis sat there in silence just looking at each other, with new appreciation that no one was really hurt by the whole thing. The truth was they were tired of arguing, and needed a little reflection on the ridiculousness of the argument. As it turned out, they both knew that George had squawked at the right moment. They knew that in the future, if they were going to fight, they would have to either not look so juvenile, or go someplace else to do it. Someplace where George couldn't hear them. And you know this made them more conscious of how they aired their differences after that.

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