Wild Life

27 June 2009

Political parrot

At that moment the telephone rang in the hall downstairs. After several rings the thief was alarmed and surprised to hear a voice loudly answer, ‘Hullo, hullo, Cooden Beach five oh five, Marguerite speaking!’

The thief later told the magistrate he had been sure that the house was empty. Then he realised his mistake, because a maidservant must have stayed behind. In modern Sussex, or indeed anywhere else in the world today, you can imagine the thief would be armed with a Ceska pistol. He would be accompanied by a few of his mates, all of them suffering skunk psychosis. They would storm downstairs intent on murder, only to find nobody in the hall except for an African grey parrot — and this really would do their heads in. But, thankfully, there is not even the insinuation of violence here since this is still a summer’s day in Cooden Beach, circa 1967. I imagine the burglar had a stripy shirt and a stocking over his head.

The thief took fright. He abandoned his swag, climbed down the ladder and ran away. I do not know how but he was later arrested, possibly because in those days the police actually caught criminals without the use of CCTV footage. The story made the front page of the Bexhill newspaper.

Back in Mpumalanga, modern-day South Africa, the Boer parrot was singing, ‘Kinders van Suid-Afrika!’ I thought the bird’s political affiliations would probably encourage rather than deter crime. My host was getting ready for bed by cocking an R5 assault rifle. I asked him if, when the firing started, he might be able to lend me a weapon. ‘Sure,’ he said, and showed me the spare pump-action shotgun he called his corridor cleaner, because of the effect it had on a gang of robbers in a passageway. And I decided it was high time the Afrikaner parrot learned the new South African President Jacob Zuma’s favourite song ‘Lethu Umshini Wami’ — ‘Bring me my machine gun’.

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Celeste

June 30th, 2009 2:52am Report this comment

As a South African living in Canada, your column takes me right back to my childhood. We all know those were the bad old days, yet the nostalgia your article invokes reminds me of my roots, and treasured memories. Thank you.

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