**Diary Entry**
When my wife and I divorced, we split everything we owned—until, of course, the tricky bit came up. “Take *him*!” she snapped. “You two are made for each other!”
And so, a gorgeous cockatoo with the rather feline name Marquis found its way into our home—though my mum promptly renamed him Kesha.
The parrot was lumped in with our shared possessions, even though he’d lived in her house long before I came along. Kesha was as fine a bird as they come, save for one glaring flaw: he refused to speak. No matter how hard we tried, coaxing even a single word out of him was hopeless. Kesha stayed silent as a spy under interrogation. The only one who disapproved of our efforts was Granddad.
“Leave the bloody bird alone!” he’d grumble. “Got no one else to talk to?”
Maybe that’s why they got on so well. Granddad liked having a quiet, attentive listener, while Kesha would perch nearby, tilting his head as Granddad tinkered with his tools or settled in for an evening whisky.
Eventually, we decided to take Kesha to our neighbour, Margaret, who kept two chatty budgies and fancied herself an expert in teaching birds proper English. Needless to say, Kesha left quite the impression.
She was absolutely delighted! For ages, she circled him, clapping her hands and murmuring praises before reaching out to stroke his head.
Disturbed, Kesha cracked one eye open, glared at her, and then—clear as day—snapped:
“Leave the bloody bird alone!”
Margaret nearly fainted. And from that moment, Kesha *would not stop talking*. It reminded me of that old joke about the mute boy who suddenly pipes up at dinner, “This soup’s too salty!” When asked why he’d never spoken before, he replies, “Well, it was fine till now!”
That was Kesha. Silent for years, then—bam!—a chatterbox. The problem? He sounded exactly like Granddad. Granddad, a tough old bloke who’d lost a leg in the war and spent his life as a carpenter, had a vocabulary as rough as his hands. Why Kesha chose *him* to mimic was a mystery, but there it was—the parrot swore like a sailor, with all the gusto of a seasoned tradesman.
Margaret was appalled but undeterred. She took it upon herself to “reform” him—teaching him proper manners and decent English. Nearly every day, she’d march in with some foreign training method she’d read up on.
Granddad seethed but bit his tongue, muttering only after she’d left. Still, easy to guess what about.
In the end, after months of fruitless effort, she gave up—much to Granddad’s relief.
Then, one evening a few months later, as we sat having tea, Margaret dropped by to see how Kesha was doing. Spotting her, he puffed up and announced:
“Protect the parrot! Kesha’s a precious bird!”
It was the very phrase she’d spent weeks drilling into him. Even delivered in Granddad’s gruff tone, she was over the moon—might’ve even teared up.
Then Kesha gave her a sideways glance and added, same gravelly voice:
“Should’ve taught a cat instead, you daft bint.”
*Lesson learned: Some things—like stubborn parrots and old men—are best left as they are.*
