Saturday, May 16, 2009

Sweet Little Bertie

When my son, Ben, was in third grade, he heard that parakeets would learn to talk if you repeated the phrase you wanted them to learn. We could hear him, up in his room, repeating "sweet little birdie" over and over again by the hour to his two parakeets. He was very patient, up to a point, and then with an inventiveness that was to show up again and again over the years, he made a kind of looping recording of his voice saying the same phrase with a [very funny] variety of inflections.

We think those little birds eventually went crazy, but they never said a word about it.

I was thinking about those times when I was playing this morning with our own new pup, "sweet little Bertie."



4 comments:

Judy said...

This is such a funny post. I loved it. Are you going to teach the dog to talk? lol.

Margie's Musings said...

I think it is funny too. If you do teach the dog to talk, you and he will be a celebrity.

BdVdB said...

Mom...the parakeets didn't go crazy. They died.

clairz said...

Oh, dear, Ben. I didn't want to say, but that sight has never left my memory: The way we found them--Two little parakeets, stiff legs in the air and x's over their eyes, while the recording went on in the background--"sweet little birdie, sweet little birdie..."