Henry Tells All

HENRY FLEES THE COUNTRY...

Mon, 24 Apr 2006 06:00:22 GMT

Last time he was seen
he wasn't looking so good...

Dear Friends of Himself...

I am sorry to report that Henry has gotten involved in some foolish shenanigans and has left the country in haste. It's all too embarrassing to go into and at best we can expect postcards from the road. He just hasn't been himself lately and as you can see when he was leaving he hadn't even ironed his shirt. He said to wish you all a fond adieu for now, and then he left so fast it made my head spin. Frankly, I'm going around in a wig, a funny nose, my flamingo hat, and big glasses because I'm afraid someone will recognize me and I'll be questioned under hot lights about the Bird. Whatever he's gotten into this time, he's on his own. I pray for his safe return, and that he isn't caught up in some dirty business somewhere. The world being what it is, one never knows...

Maitri, one must admit, concerned....

SOME MORNINGS YOU JUST CAN'T GET GOING...

Thu, 13 Apr 2006 17:53:41 GMT

"Well for heaven's sakes, you needn't stare like that..."

Well, the very nerve. Just because I got a shot of Maitri when she was just up and looked like a walking nightmare -- OH, that HAIR -- she whipped out the camera and took a picture of me when I was barely out of my cage. I mean I hadn't even had time to preen for godsakes. And she kept me up all night with her coughing. She's sick and so she's going to stalk me with that camera. At least now she's settled down with her tea watching, "The View." At least I only watch the "Hot Topics." She watches the ridiculous stuff like "How to look 120 pounds thinner by wearing this brand new whatEVER that some new designer just came out with, without even dieting." I'll admit to peeking when there are food segments, but I don't think I'm thought of any less for that. SHE will watch, well, I won't even go there, it's just too embarrassing. It has to do with those plastic surgery segments where someone starts out a fairly normal human being and comes out looking like they are now on the other side of the knife in The Witness Protection Program. Oh, it's just too grim.

I said to Moe that if we're lucky it will be just like over the holidays. She was so sick for the better part of 2 months she had NO VOICE at all for FOUR BLESSED WEEKS! You just can't imagine the peace we had around here. I didn't have to hear her come rumbling down the stairs in the morning to get Moe outside calling over her shoulder, "HenRYYYYYYYY, get that latt� going, will ya?" or, "Henry, I really don't feel well. Will you run the sweeper and dust a little? And then do the kitchen, don't forget to wipe the counters after you get the dishwasher going. You know I'm not up to doing housework today." Well, I am here to tell you that THAT woman hasn't been "up to housework" since before she was born. If her friend Jeff didn't come over here to help her out a little every now and again, the county would hang a "Condemned" sign on the door. I mean where's the Health Department when you need them?

Well, alright, I'll cut her a break. She joined Netflix because she barely ever leaves the house and she put 2 movies on her list that I really wanted to see. The Wild Parrots Of Telegraph Hill AND March Of The Penguins. She just sent her first movie back and "Wild Parrots" is on the way. I'm so excited I can barely stand it. Of course the other movies in her queue are pretty lame if you ask me but she loves them. She likes those movies set in the 30's with pretty scenery in Ireland or some place. She loves Judy Dench, and I haven't a bad thing to say about Dame Judy really but I've never seen a parrot in one of her movies. Maggie Smith? No parrots there. She likes things set in Tuscany and Provence, series from Public t.v. and documentaries (Yawn....), and she's got Proof on her list because she likes both heady movies AND Anthony Hopkins. I would never have rented it. I can't take an actress seriously who names her child after a piece of fruit. And I mean really, she just had another baby and named it after our dog, Moses. I think she's been spying on us and I don't like it one bit. I don't like the idea of that kind of business anyway. Imagine, hidden cameras and me sitting here unpreened! The very thought! And Heavenly Days! If anyone caught Maitri with hair color in and a facial mask on it would scare the living hooha outta them. Might even put someone in a coma. No, I don't think anybody in their right mind would wanna spy on us. Picture this -- this is how exciting it gets around here.... Maitri blowing her nose. Too many birds eating too much seed. Moe asleep on the couch. Maitri coughing. 3 VAIN beta fish piddling about in their tanks, Maitri knitting, more birds eating more seed. Maitri sitting and thinking. Me sitting and thinking. Yes, it's so dull around here bugs won't even come in our house. And now this. Now she's sick again.

I guess we won't be singing I Ain't Never Gonna Love Nobody But (boom boom) Cor-Nell Craw-ford with K.T. Oslin and dancing around the room (If you can CALL what Maitri does DANCING with those ridiculous feet of hers that she's always breaking or something...). Probably she won't even go out to do a few errands and bring us a treat or a toy. Sigh.... She'll probably feel too badly to watch much t.v. (she likes it quiet when she's sick... she naps in Moe's spot, poor dog...) and we won't get to see the reruns of Law and Order. Geez, this is grimmer than I'd imagined. After all, I'm no heartless psittacine. I'll go make her more tea, and pull the afghan over her legs, and sit on her shoulder and preen her a little. I might even nudge Moe off the couch so she can lay down. Maybe later I'll call out for some Hot-Sour soup. She always likes that when she's sick and she can't even talk now. Oh Bother, as Pooh would say. (We've been watching quite a bit of Winnie The Pooh lately, or rather SHE has. She watches it with our Bootle, her little grandson. I can almost take it when she goes around saying "Oh Bother..." but when she does the Tigger song, I have to put my feathers in my earholes. I mean she's no tigger and she SURELY doesn't BOUNCE. God help us if she tried...)

Alright then, I'd best put the kettle on. She's looking frightful. A bird has to suck up, er, what I meant to say was, gain a few points if he wants some treats, or, perhaps I'll just say I always have her best interests at heart, and so I shall make the tea and give her a big beaky smile. She likes that. Yes. That's just what I'll do..

Henry
The Compassionate Psittacine

*v*

I'M GOING TO WRITE MYSTERY NOVELS....

Sun, 09 Apr 2006 19:23:11 GMT

"C'mon Maitri, type faster..."

Well, finally, one has just about had as much as any right-thinking bird can take. Cats, cats, cats, everywhere CATS on the mystery shelves. There is one blessed soul who writes mysteries with birds in it. Her name is Donna Andrews and I am just delighted. She wrote one with parrots in it, one with puffins, flamingos, I mean really, there's a woman with class! I've not read her novels yet but I ordered them and shall read them soon. I am paying Maitri a modest fee to type up the manuscript for me because she types so fast you can't even see her fingers as they are soaring across the keys. It takes me a little longer with my hunt and peck method. Well, I didn't so much have to PAY Maitri as promise to make all her latt�s forever, and when I become rich and famous to buy her the biggest and best espresso machine made. She wants one like she once saw in a restaurant that you could make espresso drinks for the masses with it was so big and had a bold brass eagle on the top. I rather like the idea of an espresso machine with a bird on it myself, but of course I'll have one commissioned that has a grey parrot on top instead. I mean, really, some days he might be the only friend I have in the house.

Anyway, who could write a better mystery novel than a grey parrot I ask you? We are brilliant. We are stealth birds. We talk better than any other bird on the planet, have keen eyesight and hearing, and, as Maitri has often said, "It's downright SPOOKY the things that bird just KNOWS." Well of course I do. I know pretty well everything and what I don't know I pick up reading The New York Times while I dunk my madeleines in my tea once Maitri has settled in with her latt�. I pray that one day she will keep up with the news so she knows what is going on in the world, but she usually has her nose in a book of Sufi poems, or Colette, or French Philosophy -- Lord help me if she doesn't stop going on about Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics Of Space; The Psychoanalysis of Fire; yadda yadda yadda, I'm going to burn those darned books. Please! I'm not a book burner per se, but she's read them a few hundred times and finally you get tired of her going on all swoony and quoting them. Me, I read fine classic literature, the Beats (I'm all about Kerouac.), I read several newspapers a day, and generally live with CNN on as white noise in the background on the little t.v. in the back of my cage. I can't comment on how many heads of state have called me on my little red phone. That's classified and I can't go beaking around about it to just anyone. But let's just say I have plenty of good ideas for mystery novels. Lord! I'm an outright genius!

Maitri said to put a lid on it, that is was rude to carry on so with statements like that, but essentially I say, "If ya got it, flaunt it," and baby, I GOT it! So, after making a few hundred pages of notes and writing backstory for the characters, and developing the plot line I've got Maitri typing up the first draft. She isn't too happy about it because she's got so much work to do herself, but I just keep feeding her latt�s and her eyes are bulging out so far they almost touch the computer screen and her poor medicated brain has gone willy nilly and nearly over the edge so she just types at manic speed as I dictate.

"C'mon Maitri, type faster, I'm going to be the next Sherlock Holmes. Or how about this, we'll do it together. It will kind of be like Miss Marple with a grey parrot! C'mon, hurry on then..."

Henry
Divine Grey Parrot and
future New York Times Bestseller,
perhaps maybe even on Oprah!

*v*

MAN DID I GET IN TROUBLE FOR THAT LAST POST...

Sat, 08 Apr 2006 02:58:03 GMT

"I have lost my computer privileges and have to write long foot now..."

Well, it's positively unSEEMly. Talk about a touchy woman! Just because I showed a picture of her when she first got up, you know, just by way of having a little fun, and people saw her mouse hair -- what there is of it anyway -- standing straight up with that ridiculous look on her face, well, all I've got to say is that I'VE got to look at it every morning, why not all of you? Must I suffer alone? Is it MY fault she was born with that hair? And fer gawdsakes, you should hear her getting her hair cut. I have to hide under that apron thing they put around her neck I'm so embarrassed. She says the same thing everytime. "Cut it as short as possible while still making me devastatingly sexy." I don't even know how to tell her they always get the first part, and not the last...

And then there's that goofy smile of hers. I mean really. The poor soul had Bell's Palsy in 1995, a really bad case of it. She went all cattywompus and lopsided. I TELL her not to try to smile in pictures or the whole dang world will see how odd she looks, but damned if she doesn't forget. This picture was actually taken in 2000 and ended up in The Utne Reader when they featured us in a piece about her Wabi-Sabi Work. I was so embarrassed. I was shouting at her, "SHUTCHERLOPSIDEDMOUTH," but would she listen? Just look at the goofy look on the poor soul's face...

I don't see why if she's going to be photographed for magazines she can't leave me out of it but there I was trying to save her and they caught me with my mouth WIDE OPEN. Whoever said life was fair? Of course there was the time I got SO tired of all these dang flamingos around here I almost moved out. She said if they won't let her have those ridiculous big pink birds here she will collect all of them that she can find. (And I won't even go into that ridiculous flamingo hat she actually has and WEARS. It's head sticks up a foot and a half above her head and the legs dangle down her chest. God Save The Queen, it's so startling it takes one's breath away, but the worst of it is that she's not quite, well, right you know, and once answered the door with it on and some elderly church lady passed clean out on the porch step. I had to call 911. Maitri's response: "If it doesn't startle the living daylights out of the neighbors it's not worth doing." Well for God's sakes, what do you say to that? That night she had a party and wore one of her odd caftans and a string of flamingo lights and actually walked around blinking pink. I'm not sure what I did in a past life to deserve her in this one, but you have to see it to believe it...)

I said to Solomon, my best bud and the blue crown conure in the house, that you'd think she loved those ridiculous pink birds better than us, but that rude bird said, "You're just jealous because you're only grey. If you were beautiful and green and blue like me you might understand her love of color. Why just look at this place? Every wall in the house is a different color. Orchid, peach, something she calls "Womb Pink," (And don't think THAT doesn't embarrass the hoo ha outta all of us!) which is kind of a warm pink that's on her bedroom walls, and then there's the brilliant sky blue room..." Maybe Sol is right. I mean sniff I'm only grey after all.... I mean just look at Solomon.

Nahhhhhh, ha ha ha ha ha, if you ain't grey, maybe you just oughta go away, that's what I always say. And I'M the one always with Maitri. Of course there was that time she got photographed with all three of us, that is THE MAIN THREE, including little Emmy Lou, the green cheek princess. I mean just because she's the littlest parrot in the house doesn't mean she ought to be coddled so....

Well she is pretty cute. Reminds me of the time we lived in Colorado for awhile. That goofball Maitri took a picture of all of us. At least we all kept our mouths shut, most especially Maitri, but then, she'd cut her own hair and even bragged about it and hadn't half a clue how dreadful it looked, but she was having a hard go then so I just patted her on the back with my wing, and made her a latt�. I mean she really didn't need the grief then...

Well, anyway, these days she's writing a book, sampling so much tea she's got us drinking it and helping with reviews just to keep up, and I'm sorry to say this but not a single one can hold a candle to my latt�. I mean, she may have gotten all into tea, but unless I can lay in my little hammock in the back of my cage and have some madeleines with my tea while I'm reading Proust, well, I'm just not into it. I think I'm a little too highbrow for the rest of them, well, Maitri did read Proust before I did, but how many parrots do you know who have read every single volume of "Remembrance of Things Past," at least 3 times? Really. Grey parrots are simply so superior to the rest of them that you just have to humor them and be nice to them. Frankly, I'd like to go on the road like Kerouac, but I think a little flight across the living room is the most I'm going to accomplish, at least today...

Well, there are 3 more parrots now, and other animal folks here, but you'll have to hear about them another day. I'm going to watch 20/20 if there's anything decent on, and if not, I'm watching a decorating show...

Henry

*v*

WELL, THERE WAS JUST NO WAY I COULD HOLD BACK ANY LONGER...

Wed, 05 Apr 2006 08:07:04 GMT

"If I don't get a sip of that latte in 15 seconds
I'm going to tell everything I know..."

Well, you can't say I didn't warn her...

It's a shame really. I try to do my best by her, what with all her rather odd conditions. She takes pills for them, but by my best estimation she's still crazy as a loon half the time. I mean please, who in their right mind needs six parrots, 2 finches, 3 beta fish, and a dog. Well, Moe's alright. He and I like to hang out and watch Law and Order. He puts his paws over his eyes through half the show, but at least I've got him watching something decent now besides cartoons and the cooking channel with Maitri. Here we were just the other night watching reruns of our favorite show when it wasn't one of the 12 nights of the week they have one of the versions of Law and Order on. I mean we've got our limits. We do like to do a few other things than watch t.v.

ANYWAY, so there I was this morning, telling her, "I'm certain it's time to make our latt�. You look subhuman, your hair is standing straight up, you have that googly face you have on when you first get up in the morning and you're embarrassing me no end. What if someone came to the door? Now here's your pills -- and take them all, no sneaking them to Moe -- and then we'll go in the kitchen and I'll fire up the latt� machine...

Well, she finally took the pills and got up out of the chair. Talk about a feat. It's enough to make a bird get the vapors just steering her in the right direction and hoping she doesn't fall over her own two FEET. She's always falling down the stairs and breaking them or tripping over a tissue and going right flat out on her face. Lord have mercy, I don't know how I keep my wits about me half the time. I thought maybe I could count on Yeats, but all he does is swim around and recite poetry.... "The blue and the dim and the dark... night, light, and the half-light...." I used to like that poem but that fish has driven me pure crazy with it...

And if I have to hear that fish say, "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful," one more time I'm going to put something nasty in his fish bowl. If you ask me all three of those beta fish think they're too good for their own britches and Maitri pampers them so you'd think they were birds or something. I mean really! They may be flashy but they've no feathers at all and can't say a single word. Maitri says the way I talk would sometimes make the eyebrows fall offa sailor, but then, what does she know about sailors? (And if she knows anything at all about them I don't want to know. I'm young and impressionable after all.)

Finally we got settled down with our latte and I got my sip and Maitri hogged the rest (She says coffee is bad for boys, and she only lets me have a wee nip of the foam, but heaven's, do I live for that sip!).

Ahhhhhhhhh..... (smacking beak) ..... that sure is good! Now I'll dictate to her and get her working on today's e-mail. People don't have half a clue that I answer most of the e-mail around here. She's the epitome of The Absent Minded Professor, and goes about like The White Queen in Alice Through The Looking Glass who said that she believed six impossible things every morning before breakfast. Well God help us, Maitri didn't need to hear that. You don't want to egg the poor woman on. Three quarters of what she believes is impossible if not downright absurd to begin with, she didn't need any more screwball ideas. (Shaking head sadly....) Well, one kind of grows fond of her after all. She's not quite right, but she's better than most, and she treats me like the world's most fabulous grey parrot, which of course I am, and all of our cages look like Disneyland, and we're always out playing and having lots of treats so I guess we fare okay. You can meet some of the rest of them another day. If we don't get on this e-mail, we'll never get through it. And we've got tea to taste and review and the tea book to work on (I'm writing most of that. Don't tell anyone!) and then there's all this fiber I have to help her spin, and Lord have mercy, these spoolknitters are taking over the place and there's a whole family of them moving in. It's positively frightening. More on them another day. For now, it's time for Maitri and I to get on with the mountain of e-mail we get every morning, and Lordy Moses there's a ton of it today. Now listen here Maitri, write this down...

I just love that sound, "clickety-clackety, clickety-clackety..." We writers just can't get enough of the tippy tip tapping on the keyboard. Come on Maitri, there's three hundred more e-mail to answer and it's time for my treat!

Until next time...

Henry

*v*

Grey Parrot,
Dragonfly Cottage Office
Manager, and God Help Me,
the only one in the place
sane enough to look
after Maitri...