NAPOLEON RULES : A Story of Parrots and Philosophers

Human philosophers tend to talk strangely when the topic of parrots comes up, as if the human believed his or her stature depended on the diminished stature of parrots. I would tell you some of the bizarre things I’ve heard otherwise rational human beings say, trying to deny that parrots can talk, but it probably would be actionable if I did it in print, and they would deny it anyway. Humans think that no one notices when they start putting on airs.

A parrot doesn’t think this way. You may say that a parrot puts on airs. Well, a parrot does. But a parrot knows he’s putting on airs; he’s not like a blue jay that way, it’s completely different. A blue jay gets all mixed up in his thinking because he starts believing his own PR, but a parrot is more coolheaded than that--which is why you can win an argument with a blue jay and never with a parrot.

There was, for example, Napoleon, a parrot from Brazil who put on airs at Riverside’s Mission Inn from the time in 1907--when he was given to Frank Miller, the founder of the inn--until 1956. Napoleon held his own in conversation with more dignitaries than any other parrot in history, so Riversiders say, including Andrew Carnegie, Albert Einstein, Teddy Roosevelt and Emperor Hirohito. All of them attempted in various ways to introduce their own topics of conversation, but Napoleon prevailed over what were for him wits no better developed than a blue jay’s, and he was not thwarted until June of 1956, when the Mission Inn was taken over by Benjamin Swig, a San Francisco hotelier.

I’ve heard a rumor that Swig attempted to deny that Napoleon was “really talking,” that Swig read French philosophy--people such as Descartes--and would say that parrots only appear to be talking because they are possessed by devils. As a result, on July 3, 1956, exactly one month after the arrival of the San Franciscan, Napoleon died of a heart attack--thus, I believe, maintaining his Southern Californian refusal to let denizens from the north ruin the conversation. I can see how it was, how Swig must have been frustrated when he tried to open conversations with Napoleon about the beauties of the Golden Gate Bridge. Napoleon died with his conversational boots on. He was buried on Mt. Rubidoux, and he is commemorated in tiles in the Mission Inn, outside a room called El Loro (“The Parrot”).

Napoleon’s story makes me suspect that human resentment of parrots, especially all the talk about their having devils in them and so on, springs not from their startling ability to utter human phrases but from their aggravating refusal to let you choose the topic. You know how it is--you go up to a parrot, and he’s maybe in a cage and you’re not, so you feel pretty superior, maybe you even think that you can feel sorry for the parrot, and you ask the parrot how he is and he says something gnomic like “So’s your old man,” or “How fine and purple are the swallows of late summer.” Then the parrot looks at you in an interested, expectant way, to see if you’re going to keep your end up.

At first you think you’ve been insulted, but a parrot is too cool to throw insults around--unlike a blue jay. And you notice that, and then you start trying to figure out what the parrot means by it, and there you are--you haven’t a prayer of reintroducing whatever topic you had in mind. That’s why philosophers keep denying that parrots can talk, because a philosopher likes to keep control of a conversation.