It’s customary for people to teach their parrots to talk in between feeding them African Grey food – but sometimes this can result in a few problematic situations.
According to the Irish Daily Star, police came to arrest and interrogate Hariyal the parrot after an 85-year-old woman complained that it was hurling abuse at her.
Janabai Sakharkar accused her stepson of teaching the bird to issue her with insults whenever she walked past his house – although when the police came to see if this was the case, the bird refused to play ball and wouldn’t hurl any abuse her way.
“There is a dispute over land and property between the woman and her stepson. We watched the parrot carefully but it did not utter a word at the police station,” officer P S Dongre said.
This may well be the first time we’ve heard of a parrot being arrested, but they do seem to hit headlines quite a lot for foul language. Usually, tales are told of how people spend their time teaching parrots naughty words and phrases, but back in May this year NBC News reported that a parrot in Northern California was teaching a woman’s grandchildren how to swear in Spanish.
Jessica Baca told the news source that the bird taught the youngsters how to say prostitute in Spanish – something she is less than impressed with.
If you’ve just bought a new parrot, the temptation will of course be there to teach it a few bad words but it might be worth thinking about who the parrot will be in contact with before you do.
