Telephone Talk
Talal A. Rabaa
I woke this morning to the sound of my telephone ringing. I jumped out of
bed half asleep and tripped over the dog as I ran to the cordless phone.
When I picked it up there was only a dial tone.
I heard the ringing again and turned around. It was Floppy my cockateil.
She has learned that every time the telephone rings I run for it. So this
morning she was standing beside the cage door "ringing" so that I would
know that she wants out.
She has been doing this all morning, and she sounds exactly like the
telephone! Now I have to walk around with the telephone in my hand so
that I can tell the difference between her and it.
I give it a week and she'll be making sounds of the microwave so that I
know she wants a treat :)
My god she is a smart one!
--
When we look out the cottage window at, say, a sunset smoldering over the
sparkling waves, exactly what are we seeing? Is it nature, redolent with
raw, primordial beauty? Or do we see nature that's been subtly colonized
by landscape paintings? John Bentley Mays
Pythoness
In article <5qnsr3$s...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>,
cl...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Talal A. Rabaa) wrote:
> I woke this morning to the sound of my telephone ringing. I jumped out of
> bed half asleep and tripped over the dog as I ran to the cordless phone.
> When I picked it up there was only a dial tone.
>
> I heard the ringing again and turned around. It was Floppy my cockateil.
> She has learned that every time the telephone rings I run for it. So this
> morning she was standing beside the cage door "ringing" so that I would
> know that she wants out.
>
Wow! I'm really impressed. This is the first time I've heard of a
cockatiel learning to imitate the phone--and a hen, too?!! Give her my
admiration! What else can she do? Forge checks? :-D
Maybe you should take up screening your calls...(then she'd learn to
imitate your SO's voice on the machine to get you up, I suppose!)
zg
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Ziggy Blum
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
He who has rejected his demons badgers us to death with his angels.
Henri Michaux
Dan Spencer
Talal A. Rabaa <cl...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA> wrote in article
<5qnsr3$s...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>...
>
> I woke this morning to the sound of my telephone ringing. I jumped out
of
> bed half asleep and tripped over the dog as I ran to the cordless phone.
> When I picked it up there was only a dial tone.
>
> I heard the ringing again and turned around. It was Floppy my cockateil.
> She has learned that every time the telephone rings I run for it. So
this
> morning she was standing beside the cage door "ringing" so that I would
> know that she wants out.
>
> She has been doing this all morning, and she sounds exactly like the
> telephone! Now I have to walk around with the telephone in my hand so
> that I can tell the difference between her and it.
>
> I give it a week and she'll be making sounds of the microwave so that I
> know she wants a treat :)
>
> My god she is a smart one!
> --
Are you sure that Floppy is a "she"? Our cockatiel Sidney does the same
thing. He also does it when he hears a phone ring on TV, or at my
girlfriend's daycare (he goes to work with her everyday).
Sidney also coughs, laughs, imitates a spray bottle, and used to imitate
the beeping of the buttons on the microwave. Sidney is also an avid
whistler. He does say a few words, but we have to tell people what he is
saying since they are just inflections and tones. He's almost three years
old now, so I suspect that he'll never learn to speak clearly.
Dan
You can see Sidney and the rest of the flock on Dan's Pet Page at
http://www.accessone.com/~dspencer/ .
Susan Germain
> I heard the ringing again and turned around. It was Floppy my cockateil.
> She has learned that every time the telephone rings I run for it. So this
> morning she was standing beside the cage door "ringing" so that I would
> know that she wants out.
>
My crazy Amazon doesn't talk either. But he does a great phone! He was
brought up with me at my mothers house where there's only dial phones.
It's a real ringing sound. Now, we have chirping phones. Thank God he
doesn't do that. He's also fond of car alarms, ambulance sirens (I once
lived on the same street as a volunteer ambulance) and whistling.
I'm suprised being in the kitchen for the past year he hasn't picked up
the microwave chirp.
Susan
Rosemary McLaughlin
A friend of mine puts in long hours running a homeless shelter.
She's accustomed to getting all sorts of calls at all hours,
including at home. She was starting to think that one of those
callers must be a prankster when night after night she would
awaken to the sound of "Ring, Ring, Beep!", followed by a stream
of Spanish and English. She'd run to the phone and no one would
be there. It took awhile for her to catch on it was her canary,
doing a drop-dead, bilingual impersonation of an answering machine!