I'm not certain, but I think that might be the digital-age extension of an old Usenet tradition (carried forward by some listservers) to lighten up a little on the normally stringent enforcement of the staying-on-topic rules when Friday rolls around.
It isn't Friday anymore, but on the other hand, neither of these guys is a cat:
That's Pardoe on the left, and The Alpha Parrot (uhm, that would be me) on the right.
Portland angle: Some of you may recognize that Pardoe's a cherry-head conure (Aratinga erythrogenys), the same breed as the flock in the documentary film "The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill," which opened Friday night at Portland's Cinema 21 theater.
If you haven't seen the film (or read the book), you really should check it out. The filmmaker--a photographer of birds since childhood--has put together a strange, quirky, charming story that asks the question, what's the proper way to live? Wild, or tamed? In a flock, or flying solo? With your own kind, or with other breeds? Where nature "intended" you to be, or where you nevertheless find yourself? And--throwing all these into the mix--what happens when a hybrid appears?
Second Portland angle: Pardoe turned up at a bird feeder in my garden several years ago, when I lived in the West Hills section of Portland. He was healthy and just tame enough to take a salt-free Triscuit from my hand as he perched on a limb otherwise out of reach. As his excellent care-givers at Pet Samaritan still like to remind me, I assumed I'd find the little bugger's proper owner in fairly short order. (That was, I think, 1997.) At some point we realized that wasn't going to happen, so we moved on to Plan B, in which Pardoe becomes part of my flock.
(His name, by the way, is a contraction of "Parrot Doe," since we had to call him something while we were trying to find where he came from.)
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