February 8, 2024
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
From Myles na Gopaleen, Jr.
It devolves upon me, as the Kachina Round Table resident scientist and the moving force behind Plank No. 2 of the 2024 Dead Rights Party Platform, to elucidate the rationale behind the appearance of said plank. This I most willingly, nay enthusiastically, do.
My extensive research on this issue concludes that a captive African grey parrot named N’kisi possessed a vocabulary of 950 words, had a sense of humor, invented his own words and phrases, was able to keep his tenses straight, and could even read the mind of his keeper, Ms. Aimee Morgana. That same research reveals that the African grey has the life expectancy of an average American.
Examples of this four-year-old prodigy’s sayings:
On seeing a fellow parrot hanging upside down: “You got to put this bird on the camera.”
On seeing a picture of a man with a telephone: “What ya doing on the phone?”
On seeing a picture of a couple embracing: “Can I give you a hug?”
Further research on the verbal SAT scores of parrots raises, of course, the question of animal rights. Taken to its logical end, it leads us to conclude that parrots should be granted the right to vote. To put the matter differently, it has led DRiP’s candidate for President of the United States to promise that if elected, he will do everything in his power to see that a Constitutional Amendment be passed to enable American parrots over the age of 18 to exercise their rights to charge the ballot box and peck out a preference for president.