Polly Wants a Cracker

POLLY WANTS A CRACKER

I FIRST HEARD ABOUT KOKO and Koko's kitten when I was in the Bay Area one summer visiting some friends. Their 11-year-old daughter was reading a book about the great ape who had mastered more than 400 "words" of American Sign Language and had even established a "friendship" with a small orange tabby named Ball. What was notable about this story was that after the cat had been run over by a car, Koko responded emotionally to the death and, further, after the appropriate period of mourning, had expressed a desire for a new kitten, even going so far as to request that the new friend be the same kind of cat as Ball.
The subject intrigued me, and I began reading about the idea of non-humans acquiring language. It's probably been one of the oldest and most fascinating questions we as a species have ever had: What do our fellow creatures know? Do they think, and if so, what, and if what, how can we learn what they have to say? What do the animals think of the sunrise? What do they make of the sound of the river? What do they think of us? If the animals could somehow learn to speak--if they could only be taught to speak the language of the humans, what things would they tell us? What things could we learn? The professional linguists, of course, have always been skeptical about trainers' attempts to teach non-human animals language. What successes have been made, they say, is little more than tricks, or mimicry, and not really language in any true sense of the word.
They cite the examples of chimpanzees (the famous Nim Chimsky, for one), dolphins, even parrots (Alex, who had the decided advantage of actually "speaking" in the native tongue), pointing out that although many of these experiments may have initially shown some degree of success--a rudimentary acquisition of communication and decision-making skills--the animals would "peak" in a relatively limited way, and then dead-end at a point long before any genuine language actually began--the initiating of conversation instead of merely responding, the creating of sentences on their own, the infinite number and variety of constructions, etc.
Nevertheless, ideas die hard. A few months after the Bay Area trip, I'd come across Ursula LeGuin's short story "'The Author of the Acacia Seeds' and Other Extracts from the Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics." The piece relates the difficulties a group of linguists have in attempting to translate the strange, microscopic writings they have discovered on seeds found in the subterranean tunnels of ant colonies. The "story" goes on to suggest the possibility, if these writings are authentic, of the different "languages" of other species--penguins, for one--and goes on to project the idea of expression in plants (zucchini; even algae), and then to rocks, and, ultimately, space itself. Rather than dismissing the piece as the fantasy of the science fiction community, I was secretly intrigued. Nonsense, of course, but it all made for interesting speculation.

* * * * * * *

Our 8-year-old had been pestering us for months about a pet. A dog, we decided, was too much work, and Columbus was allergic to cats. The thought of a hamster or a mouse (or any type of rodent) possibly escaping from its cage and roaming the house, getting into the food and silverware, was simply out of the question. After more discussion, Lulu and I suggested to the kids that perhaps a turtle or a goldfish might be the suitable pet for our home, but both Columbus and Molly protested; they wanted something with a little more pizzazz. Finally, after further consideration--and negotiations--we settled on a bird: a black myna bird. We named her Polly.
The kids took to her at once, and Polly responded in kind. Soon she was repeating individual words: "Hello" and "Bye-bye." Columbus and Molly were enjoying the whole experience and spending a good deal of time "talking" with her--that is, throwing out words and phrases. Before too long, she even had a number of those phrases down as well: "Good morning!" "What's your name?" And the expected "Polly want a cracker" (although, in fact, she preferred grapes).
One evening, not more than six months after Polly had joined our family, I was reading to the kids just before bedtime. I was sitting in my favorite chair, and Columbus and Molly were crowded around me on both sides. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, I had the strange sensation that I was being watched. I turned and noticed that Polly was looking, not so much at me, but over my shoulder--directly onto the page.

* * * * * * *

There was another incident, perhaps another six months later, that caused me to pause again. One afternoon I walked into the room where Columbus and Molly were training Polly. Her vocabulary was perhaps 30 words by now, including the phrases. I sat down on the couch with a book. At first I paid little attention to the three others in the room, but then I began to notice that after each set of repetitions, Polly would respond--sometimes with the accurate word or phrase, other times with a mixed scrambling of sounds, but sometimes--and this is what caught my ear--sometimes with a single word, a sharp, precise, rising intonation: "Why?" The kids would then either repeat the phrase or, just as often, present a rewording of it.
Then one day, two months later, I had to run home from work during my lunch break. I dashed into the house, slamming the door behind me. A loud, crisp voice rang out: "I want a cracker!" Walking through the kitchen, past the bedroom and into the front room, looking to see who was home, I found the house empty--empty, that is, except for Polly. We looked at each other; our eyes met; we stared. Polly spoke first: "I want a cracker."
Taken aback, I returned, involuntarily, "What?"
Polly did not hesitate: "Give me a cracker." A pause. "Please."

* * * * * * *

Over the next several weeks, I followed Polly's linguistic development with particular interest: not only was she increasingly able to express her immediate, basic wants--food, water, changing the paper on the bottom of the cage--she was also beginning to ask for some of the more aesthetic pleasures of existence: "Music," she would now call out when I entered the room. Or sometimes: "Stereo." And later: "Beatles." "Dylan." "U-2." "Joni Mitchell." Sometimes even opera. She had a particular fondness for Mozart's The Magic Flute, especially the "Queen of the Night Aria."
Within the next six months, Polly's accomplishments were nothing short of remarkable: she could shift pronouns with startling accuracy, from first to second to third person; her skill in conjugating both regular and irregular verbs was increasing almost daily, as was her command of tense. Further, her utterances, though certainly not without some syntactic difficulties, were nevertheless lengthening and growing more and more complex.
The kids, delighted throughout, took all of this in stride. To them, since they knew nothing else, it seemed normal that the bird should talk and become more and more a part of the family.

* * * * * * *

One evening Lulu and I got into an fight--a fight that began over a subtlety, slowly built, widened, and soon neither of us was speaking. An awful silence--one of those moments that is as ugly as it is senseless. I was looking down at the carpet; Lulu, I think, was staring at my shirt. Then, from out of the absurdity, Polly broke in.
"You're wrong, Joe," she said. "Lulu's right. You need to apologize."

* * * * * * *

The calculator that I am holding in my hand tells me that two plus two is four; that two times two is four; that the square root of four is two; that the square root of two is 1.4142135; that twenty-two divided by seven is 3.1428571. The numbers behind the decimals, of course, go on forever, into infinity. They become infinity; they become eternity. I am becoming more and more unsure of the world around me; I am becoming more and more unsure of myself.
(I remember that during that first year with Polly, the kids spent a couple of weeks working with her on math drills. No story problems, just straight math--the calculations. She performed expertly at first but soon became reluctant to continue and would turn away after the first few questions; then she refused to respond altogether until the lesson returned to vocabulary and grammar. Whether Polly found the mathematics too difficult or too boring I don't know. But after awhile, Columbus and Molly gave it up and never tried it again.)

* * * * * * *

A week after the argument, I decided that Polly and I needed to talk. I waited until we were alone; I wanted no interruptions. I walked into the front room and approached the cage where Polly lived. She watched me as I neared, moving back and forth on her feet, shifting her weight.
We stared; she cocked her head; I spoke, startled by my own directness:
"What is it you want?" I said.
Without so much as a pause, she returned, staring back at me and blinking, "Hello."
"Hello," I returned. But I was persistent. "What do you want, Polly?"
"My name is Polly," she countered. "What's your name?" She lifted a leg and scratched an ear.
"Polly," I began again, "I know you can hear me; I know you can understand me." Pause. "The other day you . . ."
"What's your name?" she asked. "My name is Polly."
"I'm Joe."
"Good morning. I'm Polly. My name is Polly. Polly is my name."
"Stop it!" I almost shouted, and I began to pace, walking around her cage, circling it--and her. She eyed me up and down. I stared back. . .
. . . then looked away, and began again: "As a living creature on this planet that we share, what is it that you want? What do you want out of your life?"
"I want. . . ," she began almost before I had finished the question. But nothing else followed. She moved along her perch to the far side of the cage, her tail feathers trailing and facing me. When she turned and came back to the spot on her perch nearest me, she still waited a few moments, her head moving and looking in every direction. "I want," she began and then stopped herself, before starting again. "I want a cracker. Polly wants a cracker."
We were getting nowhere, I could see, but I went to the kitchen and brought back a cluster of grapes. She took one in her beak, transferred it to the claws on her right leg, and scraped out the middle with her beak, dropping the pealing. I hung the others from the cage and sat down on the couch while she ate. She reached through the bars and plucked slowly, one at a time, from the cluster, evidently in no hurry. I put on some music. Dylan. Turned it down softly.
When she was done, she rubbed her beak between the bars of the cage. I was startled when she initiated the conversation, which came in three separate sentences, but which also seemed to be layered one on top of the other: "Joe, I hate crackers; I'm not even that wild about grapes. I want what you want."
"What?" was all I could muster.
"I want what you want." Pause. "In other words, Polly wants what Joe wants." Another pause. "Get it?" There was impatience in her voice, an impatience tinged with bitterness.
The words of Bob Dylan drifted heavy, like a drug, through the room: "Darkness at the break of noon. . . ." We stared at each other, the song our only commentary. At the end of the final verse I went over and opened the door of the cage. Then, without speaking, I left the room.
When I returned, Polly was at the cage door, her head peeking and poking out. I left again and busied myself in the kitchen to leave her alone, to give her the time she might need. Twenty minutes later I returned to the front room, and she was on the outside, on top of the cage. She looked beautiful without the bars between us, and I noticed for the first time how rich and full and alive her feathers were.
"How is it? I asked.
She nodded her head and walked along the top. She opened her wings, stretched, but made no attempt to fly. The stereo had turned itself off, and I sat down again on the couch and watched Polly. She seemed to be studying her surroundings--like me, viewing the new experience from the new perspective.
"Anything else?" I said.
She kept looking about the room, at the ceiling, the walls, the carpet, out the window, the lights, at me. "There's no music," she said.
"Do you want some?"
I was ready to go over and put something on, but Polly had her own question for me: "What do you want, Joe? What do you want out of life? Out of your life?"
Again caught off-guard, I found myself with no response--or at least unsure of a response. What do I want? Without much thought, and without much pause, I managed to reply, "Happiness," and then added, "I suppose." I raised my eyebrows.
Polly looked out the window to the Norway maple in the front yard; then she looked back about the room; looked at me. I looked at her. She walked along the top of the cage, her claws clutching the bars and holding herself upright.
I got up, and she watched me as I went to the door, opened it, and returned to the couch and sat down. The outside air, unstuffy, entered the room.
Polly continued to walk along the top of her cage, when suddenly she stretched her wings and took off. She headed for the door and the outside world, but then, without warning, she veered toward me, taking a quick swipe at my face. My hand went immediately to my cheek, just below the eye, where I felt the wound, a tear the size of a dime, already starting to bleed.
Outside, Polly settled on a branch of the maple, where she remained for the rest of the day.

* * * * * * *

When the kids came home from school, they found the cage door open and Polly gone. "Where's Polly?" Molly shouted.
I didn't explain the events of the entire afternoon, but I motioned outside and to the maple tree. Columbus and Molly ran outside and found her easily. They called up to her, repeating the words and phrases they'd been using with her for the past two years. But Polly would not respond. They climbed the tree, but the bird always kept ahead of them, either moving carefully to the end of a branch, or up to the higher reaches above.
Giving up, they settled on the lawn and picked at the grass, looking up into the tree occasionally and waiting for Polly to come down, to speak, to fly away, to defecate, to do anything. But when she still did not, they began playing a type of tag in which they ran around the trunk of the tree, alternatively trying to catch and dodge each other. When they grew tired of the game, they flopped themselves down on the lawn and closed their eyes, panting and moving their arms slowly in the cool grass.
The next day, Molly and Columbus again tried to reach Polly, but again without success. They played games under the tree, called up into the branches, and then afterwards lay down to rest in the cool shade. For a number of days the two children repeated this pattern, but Polly never again spoke, and the kids soon forgot that she ever had.