Monk Parrot High School Rumble!

Welcome to the third installment of Quaker Parrot Photo Comics! This photo-story is based on actual events witnessed last weekend in Brooklyn, New York. You can read Issue 1 and Issue 2 on this site. (Click on any photo to see a larger version).

I am pleased that this incident was deemed newsworthy enough to have made it into the pages of the Atlanta Journal Constitution - one of America's finest newspapers!


Last Saturday, at Brooklyn's Midwood High School, home to three wild parrot nests (you can see one tucked in to the school just to the left of the flag pole), things were getting tense.


It was hot, and muggy, and miserable for man and bird alike, and everybody in the neighborhood was on tenterhooks, especially when a local pigeon began pounding around on the top of the air conditioner beneath which a pair of monk parrots was attempting to stay cool.


"Will you please stop that awful pounding?" asked the female monk parrot, who had been irritable all morning. "Can't you see we're trying to rest here?" "I certainly will not," answered the pigeon. "Do you think that this high school belongs to you?"


Sure, it was a silly dispute, but it was 105 degrees, so the birds decided to take it personally, and soon, "GRAK GRAKK!", out burst the angry female, gunning for the tail feathers of the trespassing pigeon like a little green cruise missile. "You're mad!" yelled the pigeon. "Durn right I am!" answered the monk.


After a few hair-raising seconds of dogfighting, the birds resumed their positions to maintain an uneasy standoff. "Pest!" called the monk parrot. "Invasive Species!" rejoined the pigeon. They growled and glared, and cursed and sweared, but then some one, and I wish it had been me, had a bright idea.


Why suffer and swelter and fight like fools, when you can bathe together and all keep cool?


And so were the inter-species tensions of the day forgotten, in a muddy little puddle by a nearby construction site.