Janice Bell: Shaggy dog tales, and a not so pretty Polly...

“How lovely was that?” I gushed, even although I’m certainly no fan of pets of any description.

“I mean, some pets are wonderful, but they tie you down and can be a bit of a handful at the same time,” I said to my pals.

“And when they die, do you replace them or not?”

“You’re right Janice”, Mae butted in. “The more I think about it, the more I realise that our family pets haven’t always been easy to live with.”

Mae took a deep breath.

“For instance, oor budgie Billy disappeared, and although we scoured every end of the house we couldn’t find a trace of him anywhere, until we discovered a few of his blue feathers on the carpet beside the open living room window.”

“Sounds like he had made a bid for freedom and flown the coop”, I suggested.

“But...” Mae was unconvinced.

“We’re not sure oor Billy was lucky enough to have flown the coop.”

She went on to explain.

“Because on further inspection, we found Barney (who was their old cross-breed dog), cowering behind the couch with similar coloured feathers as Billy’s sticking to his beard.”

“On no!” I grimaced at the very thought that wee Billy had been eaten.

“Yep”. Mae sighed in remembrance of her beloved budgie.

“We never clapped eyes on oor Billy again and reckoned that Barney scoffed the budgie!”

“Well, it must have been quite a clever dog to have caught a budgie”, Fiona surmised.

“Barney was a very clever dog” Mae went on to explain.

“One Sunday he managed to open the fridge door with his paw and he ate the family’s Sunday roast dinner!”

“Now that is clever”, I added.

“Yes, but after Billy disappeared we didn’t replace him, and a couple of years later Barney died, and we never replaced him either.

“We buried our tortoise as we thought she was dead”, added Angela.

“But, we were told that she was more than likely hibernating, so we dug her up again and she was fine!”

“My daughter’s hamster was on its death bed for a week”, I explained.

“And to be honest, I was relieved when it finally died as it was causing everyone a lot of upset.

“So we put it in a lovely gold gift box wrapped in gold tissue paper and as we walked out towards the burial hole in the garden I had dug, I lifted the lid to close the box when the blinkin’ thing came alive again.

“My daughter freaked out, I dropped the box and there we were for another week until it died for real.”

Which reminded me of a very recent true tale I was told about a pet parrot.

Joe owned a talking parrot for years and it had died, hence the reason he wanted a replacement.

So he searched on Gumtree and bought a new talking parrot.

However, seemingly this parrot had his very own limited vocabulary, but his new owner had no clue what he could say until he took him home.

Joe was keen to introduce his new talking parrot to his missus and mates as they gathered excitedly in front of the huge plasma screen for the start of the Old Firm match.

The room was a sea of green and white as the Celtic fans geared up for the first game against Rangers in ages.

So, you can imagine that tensions were at an all-time high for the life-long Celtic supporters, who paid little heed to the latest member of the family.

Apparently the parrot was fairly quiet at the beginning of the match as it adjusted to his new surroundings, but as soon as the tension in the room arose, so did the tension in the parrot, and he started squawking as loudly as he could.

Everyone in the room suddenly froze and Joe, his missus and mates thought they were hearing things.

“Hello, hello we are the Billy Boys” squawked the new parrot.

Everyone turned and stared at the alien big bird in the corner.

“Hello, hello we are the Billy Boys” it repeated over and over.

All eyes turned to a bewildered Joe.

“Joe!” shrieked the missus. “We’re all Tims and you’ve brought home a bloody proddy parrot!”

She just couldn’t get to grips with the newest addition to the family.

“And on an Old Firm day too!”

I guess the proddy parrot may well now be back on Gumtree!