assigned reading hell

I am in hell.

I have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages on animal stereotypies to read, annotate, commit to memory, and then write something coherent about.

Fortunately, Ken just sent an email saying that the last chapter of Zig's book (which I have yet to tackle, and for good reason)^* has material on animals.

So I'm going to take a break and see what Zig has to say.

But first!

Funny story.

Probably most of you have never heard Temple's voice, which you kind of have to have done to "get" this.

The other morning Temple called excitedly to tell me that she'd met a vet in Ohio who specializes in parrot behavior problems. Parrots have a huge number of behavior problems, so I'm sure business is booming.

Temple was excited because the vet had managed to cure an African grey of feather-picking.

That is exciting, because African greys are bloody geniuses and they're neurotic as hell, or can be.

I came out of Animals in Translation convinced that birds are probably as smart as we are or smarter, and greys appear to be the smartest of all. Anyone who can persuade a grey to give up neurotic, driven, obsessive behavior has got my vote.

While Temple was telling me all about the vet and the bird and the feather-picking cure, she mentioned in passing that the vet had rescued the bird from a bird shop and, when she put the bird in a cage to transport it to a college classroom, the parrot had asked anxiously, "Going to the airport?"

The bird had been taken to a lot of airports in his life, Temple said, and going to the airport always meant something bad. So he wanted to know if they were going to the airport now.

When Temple is excited about something she is the least distractible human on earth. So she didn't hear me when I said, "The bird talks? English? This bird is asking people questions?"

"So the vet put him in the cage," Temple said, "and she drove him to the campus."

"Temple. This bird is talking English? Is that what you're telling me? This parrot is asking people questions? Autistic people don't ask questions, and this bird does ask questions?"^**

"She drove him to the campus-----"

"Temple! Did this bird ask a complete stranger whether she was driving him to the airport?"

silence

"Well, yeah. The bird didn't like going to the airport."

"Did this bird ask a question? Autistic people can't ask questions; asking questions is an advanced linguistic skill. You're saying this bird asks questions?"

more silence

"Well I guess I should have asked something about his language," Temple said finally. "I was focusing on his feather-picking."


are you happy

Around the time that Carolyn and I first began writing Kitchen Table Math I was asked to coauthor a book about an African grey who could speak English. I met the bird and his owner and spent the day.

From what the owner said and had recorded in voluminous notes, the bird was talking. No question. He was speaking English. He had even made grammatical errors in tense: "He flyed."

The bird had been told all about me, about how I might help him write his book. (The owner said it was the bird who wanted to write a book).

The bird didn't show off his language while everyone was there (two agents, one editor, me, the owner).

He didn't show off his language after everyone had left but me, either.

He was stressed by all the attention; he didn't want to be crowded. I think that's standard for greys.

So I tried to follow his lead. I did everything the owner asked, too.

The bird had been giving me sidelong glances all afternoon, but at the end of the day he was still keeping his distance. On the other hand, he was keeping a look-out on me and my doings, which I hoped was a good sign.

Around 5, his owner pulled out a scrapbook she'd kept on his life. I sat on the sofa across from the bird's cage studying it. The bird watched.

The owner took me through all the photos. I ooed and ahhhed. The bird watched.

At some point, for some reason, I looked up at him.

He looked straight at me and said, "Are you happy, bird?"

He meant did I like him.

Was I happy with the bird?

Then he flew across the room and landed on the arm of the sofa where I was sitting and spent some time beside me.

A skeptic would argue that the owner had taught him to say, "Are you happy, bird?"

But she hadn't. Are you happy, bird? was nothing like the language she used with him. I'd spent a day with them; I'd read her manuscript; I'd seen an hour of tape of the two of them interacting. I knew her language.

It was the bird talking. The language was his.

And he was asking me a question.

A question about my feelings about him.

Anytime you have a chance to meet an African grey, you must take it. Don't get too close, and don't stand too tall. Just sit down, smile, and say hi. The bird will tell you what to do: how close to come, when to make eye contact, whether it's OK to put your finger on the cage.

Spend some time in the presence of an alien intelligence.

__________________

^* The reason being that it's likely to get me even more cranked up than I already am.

^**(Obviously high-functioning autistic people ask questions. But I can count on one hand the number of questions Jimmy has asked. People like Jimmy "request and protest." They use their language to ask for stuff, and say no to stuff.)