Chicken Jokes Revisited
You couldn’t make jokes about minorities or women and now you can’t make chicken jokes. The Bird Brain myth is being smashed by researchers who talk to birds and are finding pathways of thought in what science had considered empty heads.
Irene Pepperberg has written a book about her beloved parrot and how he communicated with her. The book, titled Alex and Me: How a scientist and a Parrot Discovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence- and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process has the scoop on how she found many levels of feeling and knowing in Parrot training. The night before he died, Alex the parrot told her to take care of herself and that he loved her. Those were the last words he said to her.
Alex made patterns and he made mischief. He understood concepts that behaviorists declared birds could not. He labeled objects. He generalized and he learned concepts and he could understand same and different, all things that birds aren’t supposed to be able to do in their little brains. It turns out their brains are more like human minds that we are willing to admit.
Family stories abound about the chickens that lived in an old Model T at my Grandparent’s house in Northville, Michigan. The family chickens sat on my Grandpa’s shoulder when he came home from work. No one had the heart to do them in, so Great Grandma Nonny came out from Detroit and did them in with her own hands. She took off the feathers and cooked them, none but her ate their friends.
I recall the chickens that lived at my friend Peter’s house in upstate New York. If they could have talked, they would have had very personable greetings, judging from their friendly chicken banter. They loved it when the children came and fed them grass from outside their enclosure, collected eggs. (Those chickens had to be enclosed in a hen house and yard covered with chicken wire or they would have become hawk food.)
We are going to have to learn to treat chickens with respect. I am unsure what this means in terms of performing the chicken dance at weddings. But eating industrially raised birds ought to be verboten. The hormones the ill-treated chickens produce that reach the table cannot be healthy.
I think about my mother now. Sometimes she told me that she would “ring my neck” when I misbehaved. I ought to have been more afraid of such a threat, as she and I come from a line of women that knew how to ring the necks of chickens.
Bon Appitite
Irene Pepperberg has written a book about her beloved parrot and how he communicated with her. The book, titled Alex and Me: How a scientist and a Parrot Discovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence- and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process has the scoop on how she found many levels of feeling and knowing in Parrot training. The night before he died, Alex the parrot told her to take care of herself and that he loved her. Those were the last words he said to her.
Alex made patterns and he made mischief. He understood concepts that behaviorists declared birds could not. He labeled objects. He generalized and he learned concepts and he could understand same and different, all things that birds aren’t supposed to be able to do in their little brains. It turns out their brains are more like human minds that we are willing to admit.
Family stories abound about the chickens that lived in an old Model T at my Grandparent’s house in Northville, Michigan. The family chickens sat on my Grandpa’s shoulder when he came home from work. No one had the heart to do them in, so Great Grandma Nonny came out from Detroit and did them in with her own hands. She took off the feathers and cooked them, none but her ate their friends.
I recall the chickens that lived at my friend Peter’s house in upstate New York. If they could have talked, they would have had very personable greetings, judging from their friendly chicken banter. They loved it when the children came and fed them grass from outside their enclosure, collected eggs. (Those chickens had to be enclosed in a hen house and yard covered with chicken wire or they would have become hawk food.)
We are going to have to learn to treat chickens with respect. I am unsure what this means in terms of performing the chicken dance at weddings. But eating industrially raised birds ought to be verboten. The hormones the ill-treated chickens produce that reach the table cannot be healthy.
I think about my mother now. Sometimes she told me that she would “ring my neck” when I misbehaved. I ought to have been more afraid of such a threat, as she and I come from a line of women that knew how to ring the necks of chickens.
Bon Appitite
posted by Ridgewriters at 1:39 PM
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