back to article Aussie parrots hit the sauce and hit the deck

Spring is sprung, the grass is rizz, and the little birdies is dropping out of the sky, drunk. It’s actually a regular event in the Northern Territory, at least: the beginning of the northern wet season also coincides with parrots like the Red-Collared Lorikeet somehow hitting the sauce and staggering into animal shelters to …

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  1. Wombling_Free
    Coat

    Drunk Parrots? Luxury!

    Here in Sydney, we get drunk Flying Foxes.

    For the unenlightened - Flying Fox = Fruit Bat. These aren't cute little critters; they are 1m wingspan evil-smelling loudly screeching bastards. That are also somehow 'protected endangered species' despite there being about 250,000 of them in Sydney alone.

    Flying Foxes LOVE Mulberries, especially mulberries that have fermented on the tree. A drunken, screeching ball of sharp-clawed ferocious anger smacking into your face at speed is one of a Sydney summer's prime experiences.

    Oh, and their poo gets stained a deep purple by the mulberries, and is the consistency of quick-setting epoxy resin. It is not fun to get it on you, your car, your house, your timber deck, etc.

    For tourists, the best place to see them is the Sydney Botanic Gardens, where about 80,000 (yes, that many) have taken up residence in the past decade. The are destroying the gardens, and the area they live in reeks of rancid flying fox poo; the Gardens Trust isn't allowed to remove them because they are an 'endangered' animal. Animals seem to be worth more than rare plants!

    Take a raincoat you can throw away if you want to see them.

    1. seven of five

      So you live in Australia and still do wonder something which would be cute anywhere else on the planet is anoying to outright dangerous in the austalian variant?

      rookie.

    2. Lloyd
      Happy

      For added fun and games

      Go to the Botanic Gardens at sunset, the cockies and fruitbats tend to dive bomb the living hell out of each other (this is in the woods up near the NSW gallery).

    3. Rovindi

      As your attorney...

      The first bit of your post reads like the opening to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

      Obviously, Sydney´s not a good place to take any hallucinogen!

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Pinin'

    Shopkeep: He's pinin' for the fjords!

    Customer: He's NOT pinin' 'e's bloody PISSED! Snokered! Hammered! Three sheets to the wind! Inebriated! Bereft of sobriety, 'e lies there waiting for an asprin! HEY POLLY! WANT AN ALKA-SELTZER, ALKY?

    Parrot: oh man be quiet man, it's too piercing, i don't dig loud noises right now...

    (with no apologies whatsoever to either the Pythons or to Stan Freberg.)

  3. nyelvmark
    Happy

    Oh, no...

    I'm as sick as a parrot to hear this.

  4. Steven Roper
    Pint

    It's common knowledge

    in Adelaide as well that parrots get drunk on fermenting fruit each year. Which is where the common Aussie expression "pissed as a parrot" comes from!

  5. Graham Marsden
    Pint

    Strewth mate...

    ... I had a hangover yesterday and felt as sick as a parrot...!

  6. Black Betty

    Loquats in my back yard.

    many many years back my cat would climb onto the neighbour's garrage and snag them out of mid-air. 10 feet later cat would hit the pavers with a thump and he and the bird would stagger off in different directions.

  7. Geoff Thompson

    Elephants

    African elephants get p1$$ed on mulberries too. Best avoided.

    1. Silverburn
      Thumb Up

      I saw this on TV

      A David Attenborough Natural world edition, IIRC.

      I saw at the age of 9, and since then, I've yet to see a comedy act since that's made me laugh as hard or for as long. Even now - 30 years later, the thought of those pissed elephants and monkeys still has me smiling.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        IIRC, the name of the fruit is Amarulla?

        Look at the beverage bottle with the same name, and you'll get your references checked.

        The elephant in the bottle of Amarulla didn't make sense until I saw David Attenborough's show.

    2. neb
      Coat

      @Elephants

      especially the flying ones, dumbo!

    3. CD001

      There was a feature-length documentary from friggin years ago called "Capricorn's Beautiful People" ... at least that's what I remember it being called - according to IMDB it was "Animals are beautiful people", either my memory isn't entirely correct or someone with a time machine has been subtly and pointlessly changing very minor facets of the past?

      Anyway - that film had a whole sequence in it with various critters getting mullered on fermenting fruit - giraffes were the best :)

      http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071143/

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Seasons

    But isn't it Spring in the Southern Hemisphere?

    And doesn't fruit ripen across the summer and begin to ferment in the Autumn?

    1. Velv
      Headmaster

      Back to school with you

      Depends if you're in a temperate zone with four seasons or a tropical zone with two (wet season and dry season)

  9. Arctic fox
    Joke

    "......is typified by birds falling over........and colliding with things......."

    Sounds like Saturday closing time in Basildon to me.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      No joke alert necessary

      when you're telling the truth.

      1. Arctic fox
        Happy

        "No joke alert necessary"

        Weeell, I did not want to offend the good citizens of Essex by impugning their ethnic folk-ways.

  10. Anonymous Coward 15
    Pint

    Crikey mate

    Only in Australia :)

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What is the airspeed velocity

    of a drunk Australian parrot?

    1. Silverburn
      Thumb Up

      I can answer that

      air speed: depends how high the tree is

      ground speed: 0 mph

      rate of acceleration: 1 gravity

      PS - I got the python reference

  12. Mips
    Childcatcher

    I had a dog that did that.

    This 12 years old, used to wander out into the garden with all the ailments that an old dog carries, and then come back like a spring chicken. Turns out she was snacking on windfall pears and was a drunk.

    She died the next summer of liver disease!

  13. Christoph

    Possible treatment

    "the benders and subsequent hangovers kill about half of the parrots"

    Have they tried giving them parrotcetamol?

    1. neb
      Coat

      @possible treatment...

      ...groan, i don't know whether to upvote or downvote this?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Was tempted to give that a thumbs down simply for the awfulness of the pun... :)

    3. Field Marshal Von Krakenfart
      Coat

      Possible Tweetment schurly.

      "the benders and subsequent hangovers kill about half of the parrots"

      Did they wash the parrotcetamol down with a cup of nest-cafe?

      I hope the parrots wern't underage because that would be ill-eagle

      The ones that died, where their names "polly-gon" and did they go to parrot-dise?

  14. Graham Bartlett
    Linux

    @Christoph

    Nah, parrots don't get healthcare. They never pay their bills...

    1. Captain TickTock
      Coat

      Keep that up...

      ...and they'll be up before the beak

  15. Manolo
    Joke

    Just like me

    Those birds sound just like me when I'm drunk: falling over, bumping into things and most of all: having problems flying.

    It's not that I can't, it's just that the aviation authorities frown on it.

    1. ArmanX
      Pint

      I recall a story from a friend of mine...

      He was at the airport (a small, country field), prepping for a flight, and a police officer came in to the hangar laughing so hard he was crying.

      Turns out, some guy had gotten drunk and decided that while drunk driving was against the law, drunk flying wasn't, so he'd take his airplane, handily parked in a public hangar. He jumped in and headed down the runway; however, he forgot (something - an acceleration inhibitor of some sort), and ended up getting stuck. As far as he knew, though, he was in flight. There he was, staring intently at the sky, flying his plane (as far as he knew), when the officer knocked on his window. He turned and saw him standing there, and was so freaked out that he screamed and jumped up, whacking his head and rendering himself unconscious...

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Crows too.

    My housemate swears blind he once saw a crow neck the dregs of a discarded can of spesh.

  17. AndrueC Silver badge
    Happy

    Budgies drunk? How would you tell the difference?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP1q5ierKVQ

    He's an idiot but we love 'im :D

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