Skip to main content

Corella classic

I was reminded of this by tales from a Kiwi resident of a bird from there called a Kea or (in languages I am far from proficient in) a Mountain Parrot. For amusement, they strip things like the rubber door-seals out of quite large cars (I have seen video of one unsealng a solid door in a very few seconds).

I search-engined around for a while and found many vaguely-related-looking variants but none even claiming ownership. If you do in some way “own” the joke, please tell me in detail so that I might acknowledge a genuine author. What you read below was basically cobbled together from overhearing several (effectively random) versions spoken, and typed in ad-hoc. As far as I know, it is genuinely unique. It is “clean” (as in “not even slightly obscene” for anyone I’ve test-run it against) and almost child-safe (as often, this depends entirely on the child’s world-view, but none of mine (16g, 6b, 4g) have objected or are even gently uncomfortable).

[START]

Fred lived in a small Australian country town. He was well-liked and had many good friends but lived in a house by himself.

One day, Fred returned home to find a small bird-cage on his verandah, containing a healthy white corella [Australian-ish parrot about 50cm long, white in this case, curved orangeish beak, bluntish orangeish foot-claws]. He noted a card attached to one side of the cage and carefully read it: “My name is Chalky. I am a present from Sydney. Please look after me.”

The hand-writing matched — Sydney was a respectable and benevolent local (who picked up the name at home in Africa before emigrating) — so Fred picked up the cage and bore it carefully indoors, closing the door and releasing Chalky for familiarisation.

Corellas and the like are also generally benevolent and cheerful — but a long day in a tiny, boring cage on a hot verandah can sometimes undo (even reverse) this disposition, and it had done so. Cockatoos of all kinds (even galahs) can become very purposeful. Chalky flew up towards Fred’s face and purposefully beat away at him with wings.

Fred — understandably — took this amiss, so hurried out to his lounge to fetch some eagle gloves (seriously thick and mesh-reinforced leather gloves for raising sharp-edged eagles) and used those to gently fend off the corella. Soon this novelty waned, so Fred worked his way out to the kitchen, fetched some small wooden spatulas from a drawer, and used those to help fend more easily.

Soon this novelty also waned, so Fred shuffled across the kitchen, gently nudged the freezer lid open with a foot, and fended the corella into it (cool the bird, cool the temper — carefully used, this is a genuine bird-management technique, probably not so popular in, say, Canada or Siberia).

After a very few minutes, all was calm and quiet, which puzzled Fred because a moderately large bird like Chalky should take much longer to shed enough heat to calm right down. So Fred wedged a spatula past the freezere’s seal and used it to gently twist said seal open a few centimeters in the hope of seeing and learning something. Which he did.

A bright beak gently worked its way out from under the seal and delicately clasped the spatula, then a bird-foot with pointy orangeish punctuations followed it. Chalky gently, deftly (and apparently healthily) extracted himself from the freezer and perched on the spatula. Fred watched him with some trepidation, until Chalky bowed to Fred and humbly (to Fred’s astonishment) clearly and formally said “Sir, I apologize for my unseemly misbehaviour! Please forgive me!”

Fred left Chalky enspatulated, curious to see what else this evidently trained corella would do. Chalky then stood up, bowed down again and carefully said (to the now-dumbfounded Fred) “Sir, if I may be permitted to know, what did the chicken do?”

Comments

Leon RJ Brooks said…
Galahs: watching a handful of the smaller cockatoos called Galahs play amongst themselves will quickly demonstrate why semi-rational Australians are often dubbed a “Galah”
Leon RJ Brooks said…
...and it went on to freeze up?

Sorry-ish, just personal experience adding a little extra perspective.

Popular posts from this blog

every-application-is-part-of-a-toolkit at work

I have a LibreOffice Impress slideshow that I wish to turn into a narrated video. 1. export the slideshow as PNG images (if that is partially broken — as at now — at higher resolutions, Export Directly as PDF then use ‘pdftoppm’ (from the poppler-utils package) to do the same). 2. write a small C program (63 lines including comments) to display those images one at a time, writing a config file entry for Imagination (default transition: ‘cross fade’) based on when the image-viewer application (‘display,’ from the GraphicsMagick suite) is closed on each one; run that, read each image aloud, then close each image in turn. 3. run ‘Imagination’ over the config file to produce a silent MP4 video with the correct timings. 4. run ‘Audacity’ to record speech while using ‘SMPlayer’ to display the silent video, then export that recording as a WAV file. 4a. optionally, use ‘TiMIDIty’ to convert a non-copyright-encumbered MIDI tune to WAV, then import that and blend it with the speech (as a quiet b

boundaries

pushing the actual boundaries of the physical (not extremes, the boundaries themselves) can often remove barriers not otherwise perceived. one can then often resolve an issue itself, rather than merely stonewalling at the physical consequences of the issue.

new life for an old (FTX) PSU, improved life for one human

the LEDs on this 5m strip happen to emit light centred on a red that does unexpectedly helpful things to (and surprisingly deeply within) a human routinely exposed to it. it has been soldered to a Molex connector, plugged into a TFX power supply from a (retired: the MoBo is cactus) Small Form Factor PC, the assorted PSU connectors (and loose end from the strip) have been taped over. the LED strip cost $10.24 including postage, the rest cost $0, the PSU is running at 12½% of capacity, consumes less power than a laptop plug-pack despite running a fan. trial runs begin today.