AN AMUSING STORY OF TWO PARROTS

Way back then when we were living in Walcott Street we had a parrot. It was a little corella (those with the smaller beaks). I forget where he came from but he was a great little pet and never kept in a cage as we felt he deserved to be as free as possible. H#1 would clip his flight feathers annd he would wander around the yard during the day, sometimes spend time with us of an evening (he would perch on top of the door of the lounge room with a sheet of newspaper under the door, just in case). Of a night he had a perch in the large workshop in the back yard.

He said quite a few words and had a wonderful laugh. H#1 as told before, was a cabinetmaker and would spend quite a lot of time in his workshop of an evening. He had an old radio down there and in those days there would be loads of comedy programmes with of course the usual laughter. I think that is where cocky learned to laugh and he would often laugh along with the audience on the radio which was fun to see and hear. He really was quite a character.

One day I spotted a little corella on the footpath on the other side of Walcott Street and realised cocky had gone walkabout. I immediately called a young lad who lived next door and asked him to try and catch cocky for me. He came back some time later with the parrot sitting on his arm and put him on the outdoor table in the back garden for me. He was very friendly and I was glad to have him back until.....coming down the post from the upstairs back verandah was this little corella. Yes, our cocky had not gone walkabout so now we had two of them. The funniest thing of the lot was when the two of them were on the table together they began to talk to each other but not in cocky talk but in human talk. Words such "hullo cocky boy" said by each of them in turn or "cocky want a biscuit". It really was hilarious to watch them.

As I felt we couldn't really keep the two of them I asked the young lad who had caught the second cocky if he would like to have him. He delightly took him home but unfortunately it seemed he didn't stay long. I think he used to walk along the fence fronting Walcott Street and someone possible enticed him on their arm and took him away.

Came a time when H#1 forgot to clip the flight feathers of our cocky and he must have flown away and unlike pigeons they don't find their way home. We missed him and hoped that someone else had found him and given him a good home.