Exercises

Story based on an unusual word.

Anthropoglot \An*throp"o*glot\, n. an anthropoglot is an animal with tongue similar to humans allowing human-like speech; a parrot.

“Fuck off” said Brian, my parrot.

“Fuck off yourself Brian” I said.

Brian took it in his stride, lifting his tail and depositing a large white glob which, falling as it did from the height of his perch, made quite an appreciable mess on my Persian rug.

Damn bird, I thought. If it wasn’t for the fact that I was a famed ornithologist I’d have had him shaved and tarred and set free in a lion sanctuary long ago.

“Fuck fuck fuck” said Brian.

Fuck, I thought. Now I’ve completely lost my train of thought. I gazed down at the colourful engaving of the Greater Spotted Fledge I had been studying. Last seen 1827, I read, by Dr Oswald T. Meningus in the jungles of Eastern Borneo. has a distinctive cry which sounds somewhat like human speech; rendered by Dr Meningus as ‘faaark, faaark’.

Hmm. Faaark, I thought.

by Peter Gifford