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It's a terrifically odd and slightly disconcerting moment when you're at one end of the long narrow San Francisco hardwood-floored hallway and you hear a soft click click click of tiny taloned feet and you stick your head out of the kitchen and look down the hall, and you see this bird.
You see this one-foot-tall grey parrot, actually, tiny and delicate and uncommonly dwarfed by the high, arched 14-foot ceiling, just calmly walking down the hall and seeking you out and you just stand there and smile and watch as you get this strange and slightly unnerving sensation that says, whoa, wait wait wait, that's a bird. In my house. Walking toward me. On purpose.
This particular parrot is young, nine months of age. This particular parrot is still developing her personality and she has yet to speak a single word but odds are she will, oh will she ever, African Greys being, we know, the most intelligent and talkative and sentient of all the parrot species, armed with the strongest potential vocabulary and most uncanny ability for mimicry, and studies have shown that this particular species can actually understand and use human language (as opposed to merely, well, parroting it).
But for now it's just a symphony in warm-up a few times a day, all manner of preparation sounds, gurgles and chirps and clicks, grunts and scratches and long, low burps, sing-songy whistles and monkey hiccups the likes of which make you laugh out loud and look on in amazement at this creature's tiny throat and tiny brain and wonder, what the hell is in there?
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