With thoughts of March beginning next week, I’ve tried to focus on spring—particularly on tackling annual birdie tasks. These include giving Dewey’s cage a good scrubbing and steaming, checking and changing the perches, assembling some new hanging toys, and searching for a variety of foot toys perfect for throwing around the cage or off the top of it. I never cease to marvel at the fact that my sweet Senegal can so easily toss them out of the room. However, two days of gloom and rain and the expectation of a “snow blizzard” did not inspire me to action. Rather, I turned to a writing project I had started to research. It’s easier to sit with one’s nose in the books and aimed at the computer screen than to launch myself into physical activity.
As I was thumbing through various quotation book indexes for an appropriate quote, I spied the keyword “parrot.” Curious, I set my original search aside to have a look at the sparse listings. The first quote I saw was attributed to a surprising source—Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961):

The conscious mind allows itself to be trained like a parrot, but the unconscious does not—which is why St. Augustine thanked God for not making him responsible for his dreams.

Hmmm. Intriguing—but the investigation had to wait and so, became another topic for my “to do” list.  Moving on, the second quote I found was attributed to Saskya Pandita (1182-1251). A quick search revealed that he was a Tibetan spiritual leader and a Buddhist scholar.

Much talking is the cause of danger. Silence is the means of avoiding misfortune. The talkative parrot is shut up in a cage. Other birds, without speech, fly freely about.

            Skipping a few centuries, the next “parrot” quotation was from Mark Twain (1835-1910):

            She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined. She was the type of person that keeps a parrot.

            The temptation to look into this quote was great but I set it aside and my “to do” list grew a bit again—as it was added to it, along with the following statement by Wilbur Wright (1867-1912):

            I know of only one bird – the parrot – that talks; and it can’t fly very high.

            I wanted something more edifying, more satisfying. Quotations listed under the more general terms, “bird” and “birds,” suited my needs. They were more descriptive of birds. A number of them were as fitting for parrots as for any other avian species. The following is just a small sampling of what I found.

            It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds. (Aesop)        

A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.
(Chinese Proverb)

            I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven.
(Emily Dickinson)

            There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before. (Robert Lynd)

 

 

 

Copyright©2009 Rosemarie Riechel