The Pumpkin and the Parrot

 

A Halloween fable

 

by Jay and Peggy

 

 

The children insisted on a pumpkin for Halloween, and that’s how it began.  The pumpkin arrived the next day, and a fine pumpkin it was, large and round and orange. The children squealed with delight and wanted to carve it that evening, but homework wasn’t done and the holiday was two nights away, so the carving had to wait. The girl carried the pumpkin (almost too big for her, and it feared for its own safety) into the family room, where she put it on the floor. Before they were chased off to bed, the children made a final visit to the pumpkin, and imagined how scary it would be once they carved it.

     Their noise woke the parrot, who lived in the family room. He opened one eye and saw the pumpkin, but quickly went back to sleep. In the morning, though -- and morning comes early for parrots -- he looked the pumpkin over thoroughly. He was suspicious at first, because of the stem. Wow, he thought, some beak. But he softened when he saw how the pumpkin’s orange color matched his own bill perfectly. He was a wise old bird, and it didn’t take him long to decide the pumpkin wasn’t a threat. Once he did, he hopped down onto the pumpkin and started to talk. 

     He had a great deal to say.

     The pumpkin was overjoyed. Nothing since it was rudely severed from its mother vine had made it feel so happy. It couldn’t talk, so it responded as best it could, which was to sway back and forth. The parrot was startled at first, because his pumpkin perch was in motion, but then he realized the pumpkin was moving precisely with his words. Dancing with him! The delighted parrot burst into a raucous pirate chant and a little dance of his own. The pumpkin increased the tempo of its gyrations and eventually began rolling around the floor. The parrot had to hop around to avoid being thrown off, but the longer the dancing went on, the more he enjoyed it. Eventually he broke into an obscene pirate song.

     Naturally, the noise awoke the entire household. The pumpkin and parrot were soon surrounded, but they were in their own world, oblivious to the two children and two adults who watched them in disbelief.

     “That is SO cute,” said the girl. “Mom, take a video. Quick.”

     She helped her mother put the video on youtube and facebook. All their friends liked it, although some watched with wide eyes and hands over mouth in embarrassment at the parrot’s songs. Many shared the facebook post, because the obvious attachment between the two was heartwarming. Also, no one had ever seen a pumpkin actually dance.

     The post caught on, and by evening more than a hundred thousand viewers had seen the pumpkin and the parrot. “UNBELIEVABLE!” said one website. The phone rang many times that night, and life became hectic. 

     The parrot and the pumpkin were inseparable by this time. That first night, the parrot would no longer sleep on his perch, but insisted on perching on the pumpkin’s stem. A BBC photographer came that evening and found him dozing that way, his head tucked under his wing. That picture went on the BBC website’s front page. 

     The parrot woke early the next morning and resumed his singing and talking. Many other things happened that morning as well. The hit rate on the youtube clip was more than a thousand per minute, and the parents agreed to an advertising contract that promised to pay extremely well as long as the video remained popular. Two television vans appeared outside, and a crowd gathered. An internet provider offered to install a Pumpkin’n’Parrot cam without charge, and the family agreed, hoping it would reduce the number of visitors to the house.

     Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. Instead, a fan club sprang up and organized a flash mob that same evening. By the time the sun went down, so many people had gathered that the police roped off the street. People got angry, and there was shouting and scuffling. The police responded by sending the riot squad. The neighborhood quickly became a chaotic symphony of car alarms, bullhorns, and shouting people.

     The family hunkered down in the house that night, terrified of the consequences of what they had innocently started. The parrot had gone to sleep, perched on the stem of the pumpkin, oblivious to the excitement. 

     Nobody knew it yet on that Halloween’s eve, but the parrot’s songs and the pumpkin’s rolling had already ended forever. It was the girl, a sensible ten-year-old, who finished it.  She woke in the middle of the night and knew what she must do. She crept downstairs at 2:30 AM -- she didn’t need to turn on a light, because the living room was bathed in the glow of burning police cars only a half block away. She carefully moved the sleeping parrot to his perch and then methodically carved the pumpkin into a particularly frightening Jack O'Lantern.

     When the parrot woke on Halloween morning, he took one look at the pumpkin and wouldn’t go near it.

 

That Halloween, for once, was a relief. The crowd dispersed in the morning. The people in jail were released  in time for trick-or-treating. The streets were a terrible mess -- burned-out flares, broken barricades, and the smell of burned tires -- but Halloween was often that way.  The family put the Jack O'Lantern in the front window and handed out candy as usual. And many, many times, they said, “Yes. The same pumpkin.”

 

Moral: Fame and fortune have their own costs.

Do not lament their absence.

 

A happy Halloween to all!