While I was at Goody’s Resort and RV Park, a “neighbor” walked across the street and brought me a bag of fish he had just caught and dressed. You probably won’t believe this, but I had not even taken a frying pan with me, so I put the fish in the freezer. Every day, I had to look at those fish and suffer from the knowledge of how good they were going to taste! I had fresh fish for dinner when I got home Wednesday evening! They were every bit as good as I had imagined, and at that time, I was glad I didn’t have a frying pan in the motor home!
The next day, the man and his wife entertained me with this story:
Maynard & Ashley
A Double Yellow-headed Amazon is a beautiful, intelligent parrot with an extraordinary vocabulary. Maynard is all that, with more than three hundred words to his credit. That bird can carry on a conversation! Not only does he talk fluently, he can imitate anyone he has ever heard.
Maynard has a cage that would make most birds envious, but he prefers the freedom of the house. His “Dad” keeps the feathers of one wing clipped, and he can only fly very short distances. He presumes the house belongs to him, and the cage is his bedroom. He is, however, forced to share the house with his subordinate, Ashley, the family cat. Now, Maynard is smart, but Ashley is no dummy. He knows without a doubt, Maynard could render him deformed and useless before he could say “Maynard want a cracker?” After all, he has seen him snap pencils and chicken bones with no effort at all.
It could possibly be a friendly gesture, but it’s more than likely a taunt when Maynard slowly walks down the side of his cage, bottom-side-up, and glares at Ashley. Of course, it’s Ashley’s nature to assume it’s a taunt, so it wouldn’t be right to ignore it. He nonchalantly walks to the cage, stretches up, puts his paws on the cage and places his nose just inches from that deadly beak. He knows in his little cat heart, this cannot continue. Somewhere, someday, he will put that bird in his place.
“Mom” came home from work one day, and as soon as she stepped into the house, she heard someone calling, “Help me, help me!” She tried to find the source of the distress calls, but eventually decided she had been mistaken. Again, she heard, “Help me, help me!” She walked to the stairs leading down to the basement and the cries got louder. When she was about halfway down the stairs, she could see Maynard, sitting in the middle of the basement floor. Again, he cried, “Help me!” As soon as she went down a few more steps, she could see the cause of Maynard’s alarm. Ashley was just inches from him, in a stance that did not indicate playtime.
The moral of this story: Don’t let anyone clip your wings. You just might need to soar someday!
