The grey parrot called out Harold’s name, and the dog came running through our back yard and up the dozen steps to the timber deck where we kept his food bowl. This went on for years, the bird tormenting the dog. Clearly Harold expected to find food set out for him. I never knew what to make of the parrot; its black and yellow eyes looked like they’d been painted on. We couldn’t decide on a proper name. Harold, panting, would see his food bowl empty and flop onto his side, looking up with that sad expression forever on the face of basset hounds. Sometimes the parrot called for Harold and he ran up those stairs and the bird cackled when the dog started to bark, outwitted again, as if they were rivals in a cartoon or comic strip.

Came the day when Harold died, and the nameless parrot carried on calling Harold’s name—the only word it knew—until the bird too stopped breathing. Soon my parents died, and my wife and I bought our first house, and we had our children young, also acquiring a parrot and dog. We named the basset hound Harold. Problem was, the second Harold loved to bite people. We let him sleep inside and he ran away at every opportunity. For years I tried, but the parrot never repeated a single word. Inside the cage it would hang upside down in  what looked like a rude gesture towards me. If the bird decided to speak, it might have said, You can’t give your kids the childhood you enjoyed.