A zoo in the British county of Lincolnshire has been shaken by five coarse-billed parrots. Shortly after the park’s reopening, the African birds made a lot of noise and scolded several visitors. With a view to this weekend, when a large group of children is expected in the park, it has been decided to keep the clumsy word artists out of sight for the time being.
The five African Gray Parrots, Billy, Tyson, Elsie, Jade, and Eric, have only been living in Lincolnshire Wildlife Park, a popular safari park among bird watchers less than half an hour from Boston, since last month. As a result of the corona outbreak, the park was then temporarily closed. The parrots were quarantined together on arrival. Presumably, the birds taught each other some crude words at that time.
No more stopping
Initially, the caretakers found the verbal abuse still amusing and did not (yet) find it necessary to intervene. That changed when the parrots immediately opened fire on the visitors to the park. But they also generally had a good laugh and motivated the animals to repeat the swear words. “The birds swear to provoke a reaction,” explains zoo director Steve Nichols to the BBC. “With the five of us together, one started to curse, then the others started to laugh.”
According to director Nichols – who invariably gets ‘fat twit’ himself – at one point, there was no stopping it, and later, even a little girl had to suffer. The director does not want to say what words it was thrown at her head, but it was apparently of such a low level that it was decided to intervene. “While we want to get everyone to laugh in these troubling times, we thought it would be unwise to keep the birds in the same place,” said Nichols.
The five scolding animals, compared by the English director to older men who constantly swear and laugh, yell and roar at each other in a local bar, have now been removed from view and are no longer put together.
The intention is that the curse guns get rid of their vocabulary in this way. “I hope they learn new words in their new colonies. But if they pass on the foul language to the rest and I will soon be faced with 250 swearing birds, then I will not remember,” said the zoo owner.
