For the Birds

My mother is a lovely, special person who I am convinced is from another planet. Oh, she looks like one of us, and sounds like one of us, but there are very subtle differences that give her game away.

For example, she insists that she doesn't understand emoticons. No matter how I explain that a colon and an end bracket is meant to be a sideways smiley face, she just stares blankly at the screen and says "I don't get it".

There are other clues, too.

When I was growing up, my Mom had a canary she kept called Caruso. Only problem was, he didn't really know how to sing. We got him too young for him to have learned from other birds, I guess. He peeped, but didn't do that warbling thingy that my Mom really wanted a canary for. So, instead of taking the bird back to the store and saying "this one's broken" (like a regular human would have done), she purchased a 45 from Hartz Mountain for less than a dollar.



Unbelievably, such a thing actually exists.
And even more unbelievably, my Mom quite enoyed having to play the thing on a daily basis. Okay, maybe it wasn't a daily basis, but let me tell you, it sure felt like it. Don't believe me? Well, you just go ahead and see for yourself.
And if hearing one of the following two songs blaring on the console stereo when you got home after school wouldn't have made you jump to the "not one of us" conclusion yourself, well, maybe we should be questioning you're credentials, too...
(You'll need your speakers on for these. Some Dramamine might not go amiss, either.)
Side A
Side B
Apparently, there is a whole world of bird training records out there. In researching this post, I found a site that would seem to support this theory. (This one's my favourite.)

Bird training? Yeah, right. It's the mother planet sending their corny messages to their operatives. Occasionally set to organ music.

Our only hope might be the emoticons, people. ;-)