Inevitably, a zoo biologists gets to know a few animals too well and I have. Jimmy, was an African gray parrot who moved from the zoo because he had a bump wing and was unsuitable for exhibition, and live with me and my wife for a little over 25 years. And he had been at the zoo long before and was well in his 50s when he died, Jimmy had a terrible vocabulary, which was another reason we were not able to exhibit him. But on top of all of these bad traits of Jimmy’s, he did one thing that we were never quite able to understand. Jimmy had been studied by several excellent biologists from The Rockefeller University who we’re doing some research on mimicking and birds and he was a wonderful mimic. And one day Jimmy laid an egg. Well, I mean, that was disgraceful. We’d live with him for many, many years.
