Tales Of The Zombie Parakeet

Oh, sure. This glowing report from the Associated Press makes this guy and his bird sound cute and harmless. But we here at Blue Crab Boulevard know the truth about the Animal Uprising™ and their evil Zombie Animal Program® (ZAP®). Which just happens to be very active in Florida. And we have very, very strong suspicions about this bird.

BRADENTON, Fla. - Teaching a parakeet to putt is no tap-in. Ask David Cota, who spent months training his Indian ringneck parakeet A.J. to use a tiny putter to sink putts on a miniature green, making the 5-inch tall bird an Internet video star.

"It doesn't look all that tough nowadays, but try to get a a bird to hold a little stick basically in its beak. The first time, he snapped it right in half," Cota said. A.J. can also dunk a tiny basketball on a tiny court. He rolls over. He shakes. His play dead is spooky.

A "Tonight" show darling from the end of the Johnny Carson era, A.J. and Cota are staging a comeback thanks to such Web sites as YouTube.com. A.J. has a MySpace.com page and his own Web site…….

……Cota, 38, owes his extended 15 minutes of fame to two dead parakeets.

The first bird belonged to a college girlfriend. Cota was left to care for it. It died.

"A fluke," he insists. He tried to slip in a replacement parakeet — and ended up single with plenty of free time to train his new pet parakeet, named "Axl" for the lead singer of Guns N' Roses.

Axl was accidentally crushed only hours before he was scheduled to perform on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" in May 1990. Cota's college roommate fell asleep and rolled on top of the bird in a hotel room provided by NBC. The death made national news.

Carson turned the mishap into a comedy bit. Wearing a black armband, he hosted an on-air memorial service for Axl, complete with "Taps" performed by Doc Severinsen. Carson gave Cota a new parakeet, A.J., whose name is a nod to Axl and to Carson. He told Cota to come back on the show when he'd trained the new bird.

Now we're not sure that all of the parakeets are actually one and the same, but we have some interesting circumstantial evidence from this video, right at the very start of it. We report, you decide to have a restraining order sworn out on us.

Other Links to this Post

1. Blue Crab Boulevard » More Murderous Moose — Friday, 26 January , 2007 @ 3:49 pm