A parrot, like no other pet, can help you reach enlightenment, whether you like it, or not. By owning a bird, you get to practice the rule of non-attachment on daily basis:

• non-attachment to material objects – that get broken, shredded, ripped to pieces, or simply stolen and hidden by the parrot’s “playful” beak; from important document, books, or earrings, to the keys from your computer’s keyboard… (as I am typing this, 6 of my keys have been missing…)

• non-attachment to cleanliness – poop, feathers, and seeds will prevail, and no amount of cleaning can possibly change that…

• non-attachment to nice things – EVERYTHING will get pooped at sooner or later – especially that nice jacket you spent half the salary on…

• non-attachment to food – the parrot will always manage to make its way into your plate and steal all the best pieces of your gourmet food…

• non-attachment to peace and silence – the parrot always seems to know when you have a headache or try to nap, and adjusts its screeching and squawking accordingly; the greater your need for silence, the higher the intensity of the noise…

• non-attachment to general quality of home entertainment – you will learn to watch TV and listen to music with a constant screeching and squawking in the background, or, more often, in the foreground. Don’t worry, with time you will master the skill of lip-reading when closed captions are not available, or decide to give up on mindless TV watching altogether, and switch to reading whatever books have not gotten chewed by your parrot yet…

• non-attachment to predictability – a parrot will cuddle with you one moment, only to painfully snip you the next, when her need of intimacy has been fulfilled. That doesn’t stop her of course from cuddling again, and then unexpectedly making a hole in your earlobe yet again. And again… And again…

So as you let go of the things that your bird has decided are not important in your life, in this weird masochistic way, you will be developing attachment to your parrot. And no matter how noisy, messy, snippy, and annoying your bird is, that one attachment will last forever. And this is how they get us… Ohmmmmmm……