talking birds, abuse and the Police action !!

Some birds can talk ….. or rather mimic the sounds and spoken language of humans.  There has been debate on whether parrots talk, have some cognitive understanding of the language ?or just replay the sound ??  Birds have varying degrees of talking ability: some can mimic only a few words and phrases, while some have been observed to have a vocabulary of almost 2,000 words. We have read the Panchatantra tale revealing ‘animal wisdom’- stories of a little rabbit leading a lion to a well – makes its see it’s own image – lion jumps into the well – only to get killed…… animals are wise ! …. ..here are some instances of strange instances of animals and the way they are treated by humans.

Recently, I had posted on a stalking incident in Germany. A woman was stalked in Germany, she reported the matter to Police, who duly arrested the stalker …..  the stalker was a ‘ squirrel ’that followed a woman through the streets and she could not escape it.   The incident occurred in Bottrop in West Germany; Police responded her emergency call and apprehended the small creature. German news agencies had reported  that an  aggressive squirrel that stalked a woman through the streets of a German city was 'arrested' by police. After failing to shake the animal off her tail, she made an emergency call to police officers, who attended and promptly put the little squirrel behind bars.

In March 2014,   TOI reported of a case seemingly straight out of an Agatha Christie potboiler, a parrot turned detective, helping nab its owner’s killer. Neelam, wife of Vijay Sharma, the editor of a Hindi daily, was found murdered at her residence; her husband noticed a change in the behaviour of the parrot whenever his nephew Ashutosh visited their house after the murder. Getting suspicious the man reported the mannter to Police.   Upon investigating further and checking the call details, Police took him to custody – the person accepted his crime and informed us that he was accompanied by a friend. They had entered the house with the intention of taking away cash and other valuables; fearing that his aunt might recognize him, he stabbed her and the dog when it started barking. But he hadn’t accounted for the parrot who was watching.

Now in a bizarre case, a parrot accused of "hurling obscenities" at an octogenarian woman was summoned to a police station at Rajura in Maharashtra's Chandrapur district after a complaint against its owner that he had allegedly tutored his caged pet to do so.  Firstpost reports that the police was at its wit's end after 85-year-old Janabai Sakharkar accused her stepson Suresh of teaching his parrot 'Hariyal', to shower abuses at her whenever she passed by his house.

In order to verify the agitated woman's complaint, the police called all the three involved, including Janabai, her stepson Suresh and Hariyal the parrot to the police station.However, the parrot seemed to have became conscious of khaki clad policmen and kept mum when his cage was brought near Janabai, to see if it would hurl any obscenities at her."There is a dispute over land and property between the woman and her stepson. We watched the parrot carefully but it did not utter a word at the police station after being confronted by the complainant," Police Inspector P S Dongre told reporters.

Although Hariyal never showed any alleged penchant to abuse the woman, the police decided to hand it over to forest department officials, after taking into account the harassed mental condition of the aged woman.

Strange are the ways of people

With regards – S. Sampathkumar

18^th Aug 2015.