Joe the Parrot

“Yeah, I can talk, so what? Lots of parrots talk, big whoop.” Joe, the parrot, took a puff on her cigar. “But I was framed!”

Not that many parrots who smoke, at least willingly, but Joe had been lighting up stogies since she was twenty. Coincidentally, it was the same year she learned that Joe was a male’s name and her owner had thought she was a boy until then. Upon learning - don’t ask, it’s embarrassing- they didn’t change her name, or even attempt to pretend it was short for Josephine or Josie, they just kept calling her “Joe.” It was enough to give a parrot a complex. A criminal complex.

Which it did.

The house was a mess. The couch was torn and ripped to bits. Curtains were dangling off broken hooks as if someone attempted to pull them down. A mirror in the living room was cracked.

The body was face down. A bloody mess. Dead on the living room floor.

Joe was sitting in his cage whistling innocently when the cops arrived.

Now she was in Pleasant Valley Police Headquarters, Interrogation Room 6.

“Fess up, Joe. We got you dead-to-rights! You had motive and the means. We found bird seeds all over the body,” Detective Lieutenant Bill Billingsley sneered, eying the African parrot with open contempt.

“Hey, I’m a sloppy eater! That’s no crime! And what means? I was locked in my cage!”

“So, you said. But we know you had an accomplice.”

“What? Who? That bum?” Joe angrily pecked at his reflection in the mirror in his cage. “He’s been following me around for-“

“No, you idiot, that’s your own reflection! You birds disgust me.”

“Who then?” Joe was suddenly nervous. “Oh… no… not. He’s hates me almost as much as–”

“Yah, he does seem to have it in for you. He couldn’t stop grinning as he pinned the murder on you.” Billingsley was bluffing, but how was Joe to know.

“No! You can’t hold me for murder,” Joe squawked. “I may have suggested it. Sure, that’s possible. I talk all the time, but I don’t even know what I saying half the time. But I certainly didn’t murder the bastard.”

Billingsley spat. “Yah, you‘re all alike. You squawk a big game, but you bird brain canaries never know when to shut-up. You just admitted to accessory to the fact!”

“Who you calling a canary!” Joe’s feathers were now truly ruffled. “I’m a Psittacus Erithacus! And don’t you forget it, shamus!”

“Psiittacus smittacus, you’re just a common grey parrot. And you’re about to be put in a cage for the rest of your life! It’ll be bye-bye, birdy for you, chump.”

Joe regained her swagger and laughed (a high pitched, annoying sound). “Like I haven’t been there before! I can do time in a cage standing on my head.” Joe swung upside from her swing and rang her bell a few times just to prove it.

Billingsley looked over at his partner, officer Joe Munday, and shook his head. “Get this drowned bat out of here before I lose my cool and clip her wings, but good!” he growled.

“Up yours!” Joe replied with an insulting whistle.

Munday pulled Bill aside. “Cool it, Bill, don’t let the bird get to you. We have her accomplish to interrogate. He’s ready to turn states,” he whispered. Then raised his voice so Joe could hear. “He agreed to rat her out.”

“Rat her out. Rat her out!” Joe laughed. “You got nuthin’ and you know it!”

Billingsley ignores the parrot. “Has he spilled anything yet?”

“No.” Munday shrugged. “Not yet. Felix is holding his tongue. But we still have one little pervasive item in our bag of tricks.”

“What’s that?”

“Catnip,” Munday grinned.