For a few years in the 1990s I bred exotic birds and bought a pair of wild-caught African Grey Parrots. Their powers of mimic are legendary, but this was ridiculous. We almost called for an exorcist when, after the first day we heard cars of my piano students arriving, footsteps on the deck, knocking on the door-but when my son ran to answer, nobody was there! My kids were wide-eyed. Then we heard the school bus arrive, the hiss of brakes, the laughter of their cousins coming to the house..but nobody was there. I noticed these sounds came from incidents that happened the day before, but the times were being heard 15 minutes early. The dog barked the first time someone seemed to be at the door, but didn't react again. I then remembered an article by an African Grey Parrot owner who thought she was losing her mind. The only way for us to tell if something was real was to look at the dog. The mantra in our house became; "It's only the African Greys." We hung the flight cage under the eaves outside, by the bathroom window, but soon loud elimination sounds echoed through the house, as well as entire conversations replayed in the middle of the night.. footsteps running up and down the hall, my kids calling for us at midnight. It made my hair stand on end, and when we moved the cage even farther away, we began hearing conversations being replayed from our neighbors across the road! One day while my kids were at the neighbors, I heard an entire "conversation" between my 8 yr old son and a friend discussing smoking by the cellar, and when my son got home I confronted him. He thought it poor sport to be ratted out by birds. Eventually I sold the pair to an eager parrot breeder, and we all breathed a sigh of relief.
When I'd stick my head out the window to see them in their long, hanging flight cage, the parrots would repeat snippets of my favorite sayings, using my voice. I never saw their beaks move so it was EERY. Every morning we woke to the jungle bird and monkey sounds of the Congo. It breaks my heart now, in retrospect, to think how those birds missed their home..
