Those of you who are just joining our story--which, despite a long interruption, was already in progress--need to know that we have birds. Specifically, we have two parakeets: Pete and Bud, although I think of them as Dumb and Dumber. If you are wondering how an animal-indifferent person like me ended up with such creatures, suffice it to say that a husband in the middle of a bad year (seven or so years ago), batting his big blue eyes and saying, �I just want to make something good happen for the children,� is powerful incentive. (One word of word of warning: when someone promises you in the middle of a bad year that something good will happen, run.)

Anyway, Pete and Bud are, well, interesting, in an annoying sort of way. They stay in their cage all the time. Years ago, we tried opening the cage door from time to time and letting them fly around. It worked a few times until Bud flew into the stone around the fireplace and upset himself. He upset himself so much he was never willing to leave the cage again. Pete, his loyal if noisy sidekick, was unwilling to abandon him so in the cage they stay. At my house, it doesn�t matter if the cage door is left open. Those birds are going nowhere.

Staying home does not keep them safe. Pete, for instance, is busy trying to commit suicide by failure to eat fruit or vegetables. Parakeets require fruit or vegetable in their diet. We supply it. Pete won�t eat it. If you give mixed seed and vegetable feeds, Pete will carefully eat around the vegetables. If you put spinach, he will give one nibble and turn up his beak --at least while he still has a beak to turn up. The liver problem that occurs when parakeets refuse to eat fruit and vegetables is softening his beak so much that it is likely to fall off and then he will die. He can no longer eat broccoli or cauliflower, but then he never really did anyway.

There�s also the little matter of the inability of Bud to stay on the perch. Bud is the only bird I know who just spontaneously falls off the perch from time to time. I don�t know whether he daydreams and forgets to stay upright or just has very bad balance but, every once in a while, there is terrible squawking and flapping of wings and a trip to the bottom of the cage, followed by a sly look that almost says, �Fall? What fall? I meant to do that.�

When I have bothered to think about the birds, I have occasionally wondered whether I have mentally retarded birds. No, seriously. I can think of no reason why birds should be spared disabilities. It�s just that, in the wild, birds like these likely would not last long. (While, with my luck, here in my house they may last forever, despite the vegetable quirk.)

I used to dismiss such thoughts as nothing more than my failure to appreciate that birds generally are not all that bright. Like my children, I had encountered a smart parakeet: my father-in-law�s bird, Buddy. Buddy had a large vocabulary and played basketball. But it was Buddy I dismissed as an aberration, not my birds.

Well, apparently I was wrong. According to a study reported on CNN, the brains of birds are not primitive and birds are not stupid. Heck, the article suggests that �birdbrain� should be a complement. Who knew?

Which brings us back to Pete and Bud and my current burning question: how do you do a competency exam on a bird? After all, before I condemn them I want to know: are they really stupid or is it all a manipulative act?

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