Bloviation | Gerund-Body Part-Animal

Gerund-Body Part-Animal

I had stopped at Microcenter on the way home from work today and while waiting on the checkout line, something odd caught the corner of my eye (and dragged it fifteen feet, Emo Philips would say). Someone had brought a cockatoo into the store. I'm not talking about the small, white, parakeet impersonaters wearing the white ski masks (figure-1), those are cockateils. This was a full sized, albino macaw with a showgirl hat (figure-2).

Figure 1 - Cockateil

Figure-2: Cockatoo


Figure-3: Emo

Back where I grew up, in the sub tropical South Florida, macaws and large parrots were not a rare site. There were flocks of wild blue and gold macaws living in Coral Gables that would occasionally fly over my school football field during afternoon practices. You could literally hear them coming and going from a half a mile away, their loud squalking echoing off the bay. Every outdoor mall and theme park in Miami had macaws on branches, waiting like predators for the hapless snowbird tourists to pause for only a moment; so the macaw could, in a flash, leap up and frantically fly onto any outstretched appendage. Once firmly attached, flapping and squaking, the trainer could snap a picture on his instant Polaroid™, and offer to sell it to the tourists for a mere $20 US, or $100 to destroy any photographic evidence in the event of an accidental pooping ($50 if it was only the bird that pooped).

Video-1: Squaking Macaws

Here in Texas however, it never crossed my mind that I would ever see a macaw again. In fact, I fully expected never to see a large tropical parrot within the Lone Star State. But there it was, in the electronics store, pacing restlessly back and forth on the push handle of an empty shopping cart. Its owner was nearby, a white-haried, grizzled old gentleman with a full white beard, weathered yellow straw panama hat, in khaki shorts and stained white teeshirt. He reminded me of the type of people who resided in the Florida Keys, people from anywhere USA who took a driving trip to Key West some time long ago, slipped into a margarita and never went home. Anyway, he stood out like a sore thumb in an electronics store in Dallas.

I had to wonder if maybe the man was blind, and perhaps the parrot, which was very well behaved, never making so much as a peep during my 20 minute stint in the store, was a seeing-eye-parrot, or some other kind of guide parrot. A quick search on the internet revealed that parrots are indeed trained as guide animals. It makes sense. A seeing-eye-dog can only stop and go to pull his person around. A parrot can fly in front of its person, tugging at a leash. And parrots can talk! A seeing-eye-parrot can yell "Stop!" and "Go!" or "Gimme a Godamn cracker, Rah!" Whereas we all know that via barking, dogs can only convey the status of Timmy with respect to irrigation.

Apparently, there are many different types of animals that are trained as guide animals. And they do more than help the blind, they help the deaf, and people with other disabilities. The formula for naming a guide critter is Gerund-Body Part-Animal, so whatever ailment a person might suffer from, there is a potential guide animal to help fill the void.

Other, Less Well Known Guide Animals:

The Seeing-Eye-Parrot
The Smelling-Nose-Dog
The Hearing-Ear-Rabbit
The Feeling-Hand-Monkey
The Tasting-Mouth-Ferret
The Echolocating-Lobe-Dolphin

Figure-4: Baby Cockatoo