This baby bird looks far too innocent to be channeling Mary Matalin.  Don't be fooled. 

When we acquired a baby sun conure Christmas before last, we felt fairly certain of his potential speaking abilities.

We thought he might imitate a few of our regular phrases if we said them often enough and prayed they'd be the ones we didn't mind having repeated for public airing.

(Yes, if you hearing him say over and over again "so-so-so," that's exactly what he's saying.  Don't imagine it's anything else.) 

We were hoping for something slightly more exotic than just, "Polly wants a cracker"  though, so I set in right away on "Freaky at the tiki," "aloha," and "coocoocachoo."

 To this date, he has said none of those things.  Ever.

He started out benignly enough, with a simple, "Good morning" or "Hello," expanded to "Good morning, Sunny" or "Hello, Sunny."  (His first real sound besides screams was imitating our dog's panting.)

We figured that would be pretty much it, the extent of his vocabulary.  He wasn't an African grey after all, and I'd done some reading on some extraordinary African greys, including Irene Pepperberg's fascinating book with an African grey named Alex, "Alex and Me."

We just went about our business.

Then, one day, we realized Sunny wasn't just mimicking us.  He was engaging in conversation.

He consistently said "thank you" whenever we gave him something, which wasn't too surprising, and often "ouch" and/or "I'm sorry" if he hurt someone, but he surprised my husband one morning over a year ago when he picked him up out of his cage and gave him a little love.  "That's better," Sunny said.

On a drive out west last summer, we stopped at a red light in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.  "Come on, let's go!" he piped.  (He'll say it whenever he wants us to get moving now, whether at home or in traffic.)

I turned to my husband on another occasion to ask him to be quiet while I navigated heavy traffic.  "That's right!" Sunny added, confident that being on Mom's side was being on the right side of the law.

We decided to grow the wings that had been too severely cut when we got him as a baby and let him learn to fly for full neurological development, before trimming them back.  I called to him from across the kitchen to fly to me.  "Not right now!" was his "you're not the boss of me" response.

Of course these things made us laugh.   We didn't make too much of them, even when they caught us off guard.  Then one day, Sunny began singing scales to me.  Not just any scales.  1-3-5-8-5-3-1.  I don't sing those scales to him.  I didn't know where he got them.  

Another day, in the car, he began humming Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.  Again, I wondered.  Had I flipped stations on the XM radio?  I wasn't playing it in the house.  Where had he gotten it?  He listens to Tom Jones and Donovan.  His favorite song is Good Morning, Starshine.  Beethoven isn't on his playlist.

As a baby he started tapping out a song over and over on the inside of his travel cage in the car, and one day we realized it was the 11th track on the "I want my dog to go to sleep in the car" CD we occasionally play when travelling with the animals, complete with very distinct syncopated rhythm.  (Tip to pet owners: this CD is foolproof at submarining dogs in the car, will put them completely into a state of Zen.)

Of course our little sun conure, now almost two, quite stubbornly never displays this vocabulary in front of strangers or even friends.  They're not convinced he knows how to talk at all.  He squeals, nips, occasionally kisses, but doesn't sound like a budding Mozart or Mark Twain.

Except to us.  He'll go on endlessly babbling at me, answering questions, being a smart alec much of the time, emphasis on the smart.  Well, maybe on the alec. 

The other day, riding in the car, I heard from behind my seat in the travel cage a very clear and sharp, "Despicable!"

I stopped suddenly, and then giggled.   What a perfect word for a baby bird, how fun to say.  I wondered if he had been listening to ads for the new "Despicable Me" film or just too many Mel Gibson rants.  Maybe he was offering his own commentary on the state of the economy or the oil spill in the Gulf.

Eventually I solved the mystery.  We'd been listening to James Carville and Mary Matalin on CNN on the radio.