Enslaved by Ducks by Bob Tarte Read Free Book Online Page A

once tell us that birds eventually accept their owners as members of their flock?” Linda asked. “Or even as substitutes for mates?”
    “Mates?” I experienced another pang of dread. “Ollie certainly wouldn’t have bonded to us in such a short period of time.”
    But he had. As long as we stood at his cage talking to him or coddling him on our finger, he acted reasonably. But if we turned our attention away, he would immediately begin calling us with high-pitched, scolding chirps. His voice was inoffensive enough, as parrots go—certainly nothing like the scream of a cockatoo, which can cause your ears to bleed—but the chirps were unrelenting. He unleashed them in strings of tens, hundreds, and thousands, and nothing short of our surrender would abate the bad behavior. Warily, I would introduce my hand into his cage and hold my breath as he stepped onto my finger. His bright green body would wiggle from side to side, his black eyes gleaming as he alternated his beak, left foot, beak again, and right foot to scramble up my sleeve and settle triumphantly on my shoulder. He’d nuzzle my neck with affection as I walked around the house. Then, once he had decided that the scenery had grown stale, he would deliver a wire cutter– like bite to my face.
    After three days, Ollie’s tyranny had completely worn us down. With one ear constantly cocked in his direction, I had trouble concentrating on anything else. My shirt collars sported beak-holes. Linda’s cries at yet another biting reverberated throughout the house. Dinner was the final straw. Linda had prepared a small dish of Purina Monkey Chow, the recommended food for an adolescent brotogeris, by soaking the pellets in warm water until soggy.Trustingly, she placed the dish on top of his cage, and we took our places at the table.
    “You’ve got to say one thing for him. He’s got a healthy appetite,” Linda pointed out.
    “Too healthy,” I complained, leaning forward in my chair as Ollie dipped his beak into the goo and slung it in all directions. “We might as well eat outside in the rain.”
    With the gleeful demeanor of an infant who has just discovered the law of gravity, he gave the dish a shove. It plummeted from his cage top, hitting the counter at exactly the proper angle to spatter monkey gruel all over our food. He squealed in happiness as our voices rose.
    “Do we really want a pet like this?” I whined to Linda. We had erred by not returning Binky to Warren before his sullen presence around the house had seemed inevitable. We didn’t want to make the same mistake with Ollie. We had to act at once. The next morning we were back at Jonah’s Ark explaining the situation to an un-sympathetic Violet. Our claim that we were unable to control the small orange-chin clearly struck her as ridiculous, given that a pterodactyl-size blue and gold macaw with a beak slightly larger than Ollie’s entire body had been perched on her forearm when we slunk into the store.
    “These pocket parrots are on sale now,” she told us gruffly. “I can’t give you what you paid for him, that’s more than what I could sell him for. You’re looking at around $120 maybe.” Discerning that we were at a breaking point where we might actually pay her to take Ollie back, she made an even better deal for herself. She talked us into exchanging him for a different member of the brotogeris family that had a reputation for comparative gentleness. “She’s a grey-cheek parakeet,” said Violet, as she presented a meek bird on her finger and pulled a wing away from its body to show us the yellowunderlying feathers. All of this the grey- cheek suffered without complaint. She was pretty enough, resembling an orange-chin whose forehead, cheeks, and chin had been dusted with a grey-green powder. But her colors, like her temperament, lacked Ollie’s fire.
    “Just keep in mind that she was wild-caught,” Violet advised us, meaning that instead of having been hand raised and