Sticks and Stones

So I went to a nearby zoo the other day. It was like any other zoo.



Penguins are cute wherever you go.



If you watch certain primates long enough they will do things that might embarrass you. Well maybe not you, per se, but normal people.



Ostriches are weird and a little scary.



Llamas are, well, llamas.



And so on. But what made this trip special was not so much the zoo, or the animals in it, but an animal I encountered shortly after leaving the zoo. It was a parrot, on a perch outside a coffee shop, with no physical restraints to keep him from taking off.



I had tried to get similar birds in the zoo to say 'strawberry', like in the movie "Up In Smoke" with Cheech & Chong (I think), but to no avail. I decided to give it one more go, and wonder of wonders, the bird spoke! In Japanese. Here is what he said in reply to my 'strawberry. strawberry' proddings: 「ばかやろう！ばかやろう！」("Baka yarou! Baka yarou!") To the uninitiated that does not mean strawberry in Japanese. It means 'You're an idiot! You're an idiot!'