Polly the Berwakker

I have a friend in Spain now! My friend Chelsea has joined me here in Spain, and for once my conversations are more involved than "How long have you been traveling?" and "Do you know where the bus station is?"

Chelsea speaks Spanish, so it's made things much easier on me. It helps in restaurants, and also in conversations with caged birds.

We were walking down one of Seville´s many stone alleys, winding like a drunk, gray snake (the alley, not us), when out of one of the nearby windows we heard "BERWAKKKK!" (that´s as close as I can come to a proper description of the sound, except to add that I at first thought it was a child that had accidentally stuck his finger in an electrical socket).

We walked back to the source of the berwakkk, and found a parrot perched in a cage, with his owner behind him. He was trying to speak it seemed, but his words seemed like nothing more than cries of caged avian angst. His pupils were dilating and constricting wildly as he tried to communicate, as if possessed or high on something. Finally, his owner intervened as Bird-Spanish translator:

Como te llama? Como te llama?-- he was asking our names.

We told him our names, but he just kept on asking.... Como te llama, como te llama, comotellamacomotellama.....

I hate it when birds don´t listen. But he might have really just been all high on birdnip or something, or he may not have heard us, or maybe you just can´t have normal conversations with birds anyway.