Marcel the Mute Parrot

As you can clearly see, Marcel is not a real parrot, but he does have an honoured place in the garden. He does appear to be considerably more lively than the now world famous avian star of Monty Python's dead parrot skit.

I learned something from Marcel, who, as far as I know, didn't actually have a name until my sister came to visit me this past summer.

Marcel is adopted. He sat in a box of used toys that one of my colleagues brought to work and had outlived his usefulness. At first I thought this might be because my colleague's kid had outgrown him. However, as time passed and no one claimed him anew, I thought it a shame that he was just sitting there, all alone, discarded, and generally being ignored. Upon closer examination, I discovered that Marcel was actually designed to be quite a bit more animated than the evidence would have suggested. His wings are hinged, as is his beak, and there's a little button on the front of his perch. A sticker reads, "If the parrot does not move or speak, please replace batteries." Well, I replaced the batteries, and all I heard was a dismal, strangled, ratcheting sound that barely resembled a squawk, then nothing. Brilliantly, I deduced that the mechanisms no longer functioned according to plan...even with the batteries included, hence the "dead parrot." I knew no one would ever take him and he'd end up in some landfill site eventually, and the thought of that saddened me. Just because he could no longer flap his wings and talk didn't mean he still couldn't at least be decoration.

So Marcel moved from the used-toy box into a bag thence into the back seat of my van, where I consistently forgot about him for quite a spell. (Well, at least he was being chauffeured around and not thrown into the dump.)

I finally remembered to bring him in the house last fall. He came with a stand, and all last winter, he perched on his stand, atop the buffet, amidst the plants in our dining room. Just another adopted addition to a household full of rescued critters, both live and inanimate. He looked kind of cute sitting there amongst the begonias. Very Amazonian jungle-like; right in his element.

When I got my "outdoor" garden going just this past summer -- it's actually a deck garden -- I decided Marcel would be a worthy addition, perched on his little plastic log, hanging from a rafter of the covered deck. I had a vision of how he'd look suspended above the begonias and geraniums, and an idea of how to do it. I apprised my husband of the ingenious plan and he said, "Go for it."

Now, Marcel looks deceptively light, but he's actually rather weighty. When I finally got the 550 cord tied to the perch, where I wanted it and even used a crossbar above, separating the two pieces of cord and to make the perch swing-like, I picked up the rope and...FWOOMP!... Marcel promptly did a nose dive (beak dive?) and was hanging upside down, which suddenly made him look remarkably more similar to Monty Python's dead parrot. "Well, shit," I said, after I'd stopped laughing out loud. I then carried him, still inverted, out to the garage and showed him to my husband and said, "There appears to be a flaw in my design." I love hearing my husband's laughter. It's deep and when it comes, it comes out straight, and full, and true.

Well, I'm no engineer, but I carried Marcel back to the house and decided that what he really needed was a counterweight underneath his perch. But what to use? Well, you can see in the photo that there's a white hook beneath his perch. The white hook is part of a cheap plastic hanging planter. I placed a terra cotta pot containing a geranium plant, inside the hanging planter and voila, the perfect counterweight.

Marcel graced the deck all summer long. When my sister visited, I pointed out my awesome engineering skills to her, but also mentioned that at some point in his life, the parrot was supposed to flap his wings, and his beak was supposed to open and close, and he was actually supposed to talk, but that he was broken. Sighhhhhhhhh. Nance asked me what his name was and I said he didn't have one. She said, "Well, he doesn't talk, right? So he's a mime parrot. His name should be Marcel."

And that is how Marcel, the mute parrot, got his moniker.

What did I learn from Marcel?

Well, not so long ago, a few years, perhaps, when faced with the inverted parrot and my frustrated attempt to have him do exactly as I wished, on the first attempt, I would have thrown a tantrum and given up, not being able to be bothered trying to rectify what I would have seen as just another failed attempt at doing something perfectly the first time. I would have seen it as utter failure because doing something wrong -- making a mistake, misjudging -- was an unforgivable defect in me, as far as I was concerned. I would have seen that inverted parrot as an irrevocable flaw in myself, instead of a correctable flaw in the plan. But that was then and many things have changed.

I laughed at myself, went out of my way to actually show and tell others about my flawed plan, and then, instead of giving up...because I wasn't perfect the first time...I persevered and made it work.

Marcel, the discarded toy that no one wanted, because he wasn't perfect and didn't work the way he was designed to anymore, now adds a bit of colour and character to our household, mute testament that (a) just because something isn't perfect doesn't mean it's garbage and (b) I don't have to be perfect either.

Rose ;-)
November 7, 2009