District Attorney: For the court record, your name, sir?
Witness, Parrot: Polly.
D.A. Is
that your full name? Don’t you bear a longer appellation?
Parrot: If
you’re suggesting Wannacracker, no.
Judge (to Parrot): Answer the question directly, please.
Parrot: I
am Polly Z. Psitlaciformes, according to the book.
D.A.: What’s
the Z stand for?
Parrot: Zygodactyl,
meaning pair-toed, unlike, say, the stork or the rook.
D.A.: That
is a mouthful, if I may say so.
Parrot: I
don’t see why: you’re here to ask a series of predictable dumb questions, not
to say anything in particular.
D.A.: Your
Honor—
Parrot: Withdrawn.
D.A. (to Parrot): You have been accused, among other things, of complete,
off-the-wall smart-ass remarks that frequently deviate into sense.
D.A.: On
what?
Parrot: On
the mood of the moment, on the occasion.
D.A.: Explain
that further, please.
Parrot: It’s
a matter of the active or passive state of the prevailing intelligence, that’s
all...You see, all birds, despite their maligned small heads, have some of the
highest brain-size-to-body ratios—parrots especially, and are almost smarter
than anybody out there.
D.A.: Out
where?
Parrot: Judge,
he’s badgering the witness
Judge: But
he is a badger...Now, answer the question.
Parrot: Out
anywhere, in the actual jungle, in the suburban jungle, in the world, on earth.
Perhaps I should not be revealing this, but—birds are generally so smart they
try to conceal their intelligence, just in case.
D.A.: In
case of what?
Parrot: In
case they’ll be found out: how they navigate, when they migrate; how they descended from the dinosaurs, though they actually ascended; what their future
plans are, et cetera.
D.A.: That
sounds sinister.
Parrot: As
if we’re hatching something?
D.A.: Oh,
I am so pleased you just said that, it exactly supports these proceedings. The
leading charge against you is irresistible obtrusive punning—sometimes merely
verbal, other pertinent times quite stunning, suddenly cerebral.
Parrot: Is
that illegal? Anyway, you don’t apparently share that dilemma.
D.A.: Your
Honor, this is precisely what the People mean. He’s making my case every time
he opens his mouth.
Parrot: Maybe—and
you’re losing it every time you open yours.
D.A.: Your
Honor!—
Parrot: May
I approach the bench? (Judge assents) I call your attention to counsel’s meretricious use of “Your Honor” in his constant fawning address to the magistrate. It’s a nauseating, servile exhibition.
Judge: But
he is calling me what I am; that is my honorific, official title in court.
D.A.: What,
if I may be so bold, should we call him?
Parrot: Oh,
no you don’t—you’re not going to trap me in a slipped, off-side, unguarded
irreverence—like Your Foolishness, or Your Pomposity, Your Ass, all like that.
Counsel ought to be ashamed of himself.
D.A.: Me?
I didn’t—
Judge (to D.A.): He is leading you on, counselor. (to Parrot) Just what would
you call me?
Parrot: Simply,
“Judge.” What’s wrong with that? It’s what you are. Can it be disrespect to
call you what you are, to address you as such?
Judge: You
may do so....And (to D.A.) Counselor, you—
D.A.: Your
Honor?
Judge: (shaking head) You’re incorrigible.
D.A.: “Your
Incorrigible?” My title now?
Judge: Oh,
get on with it, if you can pick up the thread of your questioning anymore.
You’re becoming imputatious, disputatious and—
Parrot: —belly-acheous.
D.A.: I
beg your pardon!
Parrot: As
well you should.
D.A.: Well,
I never—I will not be swerved from my line of inquiry....A principal charge
against you, sir, concerns the aggressive nimble verbal facility of yours that
often veers to wit.
Parrot: To
wit—what?
D.A.: There
he goes, Your Honor! If it please the court, I submit this all too expectable
witticism as Exhibit A. And here is Exhibit B, the matter on which he was
arraigned—calling himself an “eagle maniac.” (to Parrot) And were you not, at
the relevant time, alluding to and flaunting your flagrant self-esteem?
Parrot: Perhaps,
in a sub-rosa way. I happened to be in a garden at the moment and glimpsed the
shadow of a bird of prey overhead, a ravening member of the accipiter family.
That’s Latin, again, in case you’re still as linguistically impaired as you
were when we began session.
Judge: Now,
now, I can’t allow that. Restrain yourself. A word of warning.
Parrot: A
word of warming?
D.A.: Ah-ha!
Your Honor, the state adds bold malapropism to its charges.
Parrot: Judge,
it’s a timely symptom of my disability, and my particular defense. I suffer
from anticipatory pertinence. I have a mental disorder of intermittent cranial
felicity; it just comes over me, as the court has just heard.
Judge: All
that is for summing up. For now, just answer the questions, please, and control
yourself.
D.A.: And
now the main charge. You claim you were bought by—
Parrot: I
was smuggled out of Africa by a black marketeer, to begin with.
D.A.: Yes,
yes, we are all terribly sorry to know that—the judge, jury and attendance. If
you’ll stop playing to the latter two, may we just have the subsequent facts?
You were acquired and duly housed by an unusually garrulous lady.
Parrot: Say
it plain: she was a champion chatterbox: a cackling, nattering woman, impossible to stop her. Ask her husband. He’ll tell you she went from a young
non-stop to an old non-stop boor, driving him to despair. He was at the stage
when he could have throttled her in unalloyed sheer delight, just when I came
upon the scene. You guess the rest? When I started helplessly mimicking her,
sometimes straight, sometimes with satire and levity, he focused on me.
D.A.: Just
a moment please. Weren’t they wed a long time at this juncture?
Parrot: Yes,
over filthy years of marriage.
D.A.: You
meant “fifty.”
Parrot: That,
too. Oh, I see where you’re going: why did he become overtly murderous just
when I entered the picture? You think I provoked him? Blame the victim. The
truth is he was a homicidal coward and needed a safe substitute. Yes, I
rendered everyone of her syllables with such fidelity, due to my skill of
imitation, that he saw me as appropriately conveniently killable, by virtue of
the rules of psychological displacement. He had, by now, used up all his available restraint. He thought he’d cut my/slash/her neck without anyone
knowing the truth. He was going to commit the perfect crime by avian
deflection.
Judge: Very
subtle and shrewd. Even convincing (to the D.A.). These particular charges ought to
be removed.
D.A.: Your
Honor, you can’t be serious.
Judge: Approach
the bench.
D.A.: May
I?
Judge: No,
you may not. And don’t tell me what I can or can’t be. Now, resume your
cross-examination.
D.A. (to Parrot): So, you flew the coop—er—cage?
Parrot: Yes,
I confess, though I was under duress.
D.A. (to Judge): The court has just heard a full confession. This parrot is a
parrot-at-large, a fugitive.
Judge: What
he is, is smart and forthcoming.
D.A.: Your
Honor, I ask that you recuse yourself.
Judge: For
what cause?
D.A.: Bias.
How a presiding human being can side with a bird against a mammal, I’ll never
know, but you are doing it, sir.
Judge: Declined.
Will you get on with your cross—without being so cross?
D.A. (to Parrot): We have just learned that you are an escaped prisoner.
Parrot: Now
you’re correct. Prisoner, through no fault of my own, except that I am pretty
and vocal and have an unacknowledged high IQ—talents, apparently, that warrant
jail time.
D.A.: Nevertheless,
you are in flight.
Parrot: Well,
of course, I’m a bird.
D.A.: You
know what I mean. Your Honor, he knows what I mean!
Judge: Calm
down, counselor, you’re getting loud.
Parrot: Sure,
he is; he needs to boister himself up.
D.A.: This
entire proceeding is—is—unheard of.
Parrot: What
a riposte! Words have finally fled you. You fail only in a crisis?
Judge: I
have heard enough. Case dismissed. Not guilty.
D.A.: This
is a travesty, Your—
Parrot: “Majesty”?
Shall we try for the extraordinary after your ordinary inflations have misfired?
D.A.: I
simply refuse—
Judge: It’s
over, counselor. The court is about to be adjourned. I must charge the panel
now. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury: You have heard the verdict, what is your
evidence?
Foreman: False
arrest.
Judge (to Parrot): You are free to go. Do you think justice was done here?
Parrot: Yes.
Only, I shouldn’t have been here in the first place!
Judge: Here,
in court?
Parrot: Here
in this country. And your people shouldn’t have been there.
Judge: Where?
Parrot:
In my country.
Judge: Is
that where you’re going now?
Parrot: Yes,
if I can only find my rain forest again. My wings are somewhat clipped (we’re
mutilated as well as adored, you know), but if I can get into a strong jet—
Judge: —stream?
Parrot: —Air
Line, smuggling myself in the baggage compartment, again, for the trip back
home, maybe I’ll make it. If there is still a home. What a place it was, Judge!
Beautiful. And I want to go back to my equals, the reds and greens and yellows,
all my old friends and relatives, my polychromatic fellows.
Judge: Is
that where “Polly” come from?
Parrot: Judge,
you’re a man after my own heart, in a comradely not culinary way. You’d tempt
me, unless you have a scatterbrained, chatterbox wife?
Judge: I
don’t think so.
Parrot: Thanks
anyway. I’ll just go home.
Moral:
A bird in the bush is—where we were meant to keep it.
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