Not A Dead Parrot Sketch

The humor of the Monty Python team is probably appreciated by a worldwide audience.

This I am sure does not depend upon a sophisticated understanding of English as a language.

Much of their humour is very visual.

Although as someone in their early 50s, my childhood was very much the time when Monty Python was being aired on British television for the first time, I saw very little of the original broadcasts.

It was not until I was much older that I have come to appreciate their style of humour, and find it extremely funny.

And of course, one of their most well known comedy sketches must be the dead parrot sketch.

It is so familiar to most people that I will not even contemplate providing a description here, confident that most people will instantly know exactly what I am talking about.

And one of the extraordinary things about this particular moment in cultural history is that it is possible to simply locate and play such snippets of television history at the press of a button.

And most people, as I was made aware this very morning, can simply access the Internet from their mobile phones.

For me this morning, it was my failure to be able to recollect the name of a poet. But I was able to remember one of his most famous collections, A Shropshire Lad.

In a matter of seconds, it was possible for my carer to discover that the forgotten poet was AE Housman, and it was possible to be reminded of one of his most famous poems almost instantly.

This is truly an amazing thing. Cynics might say that it will mean that we will lose the capacity for memory of any kind quite quickly, as everything that we need to recall can be obtained online almost instantly.

Personally I plan to retain my capacity to remember things, whether it be moments in history, snatches of Shakespeare, or indeed other anecdotes that I wish to retain for conversational use.

But all of this of course is simply a preamble, so that my blog article this morning, concerns a strange sect that I recently discovered.

I am a dog lover, and my dog is regularly walked by a dog lover that has recently purchased an African grey parrot.

This was an expensive animal to purchase, and some might think twice about spending such a sum on something that may well outlive you.

Because I believe the lifespan of an African grey parrot can be as much as 70 or 80 years.

So, if a reason for updating ones' will were needed, this is definitely one of them.

The strange fact that I have learned from the proud new owner of this parrot is that avocado is a parrot poison.

I had not known this, and although I was aware that chocolate is similarly dangerous for dogs, perhaps there will be many other species specific toxins that I am not aware of.

This did remind me of the fact that the tomato and the potato are both close relatives of the Deadly Nightshade, a common hedgerow plant in Britain.

And since I have that kind of mind that still retains useless facts, I suddenly remembered how the South American Natives had given potatoes to Sir Francis Drake, who then brought them back to Britain to give to his Queen, Elizabeth I, in the hope that they would be poisoned by them.

The natives themselves would not eat the potato, unless it had been carefully and ritually prepared by priests, which I believe involved cooking for fairly extended periods.

Of course, the modern potatoes that we purchase for daily use have been bred to be relatively harmless.

But it's still remains the case that green potatoes should not be eaten, as they are harmful.

We have in English the proverb that one man's meat is another man's poison, but I had not quite translated it to the idea that avocados should at all costs be avoided by parrots.