Our Feathered Friends in the Wild

First, a bit of parrot-related trivia:

The following is a list of average life-span of various exotic birds that are popularly bred for captivity.

Macaws 50 - 100 +

Cockatoos 40 - 60 +

Amazons 50 - 70 +

African Grays 50 - 60 +

Eclectus 65 - 85

Conure 12 - 30

Lories and Lorikeets 13 - 25

Caique 30

Senegal 50 years

Cockatiel 12 to 20

Parakeets 7 to 18 years

Lovebirds average 15 to 25

Canaries average 10 to 15 years

as you can see, one of the defining characteristics of these birds is that they live, a really, really long time - Provided that they don't meet their end either from assholes with pellet guns, or dimwitted cats with speech impediments. They're remarkably hardy creatures, and can flourish in just about any climate. I've also enclosed a map (the red zone) illustrating suitable habitats for the above listed birds (I know, I know, just trust me I'm going somewhere with this).

And finally, I went over to Craigslist to see what I could find over there.. I chose Pensacola, Florida, at random, and I found four birds for sale: 1 African Gray, 2 Cockatoos, and a "Bluw Bird of Paridice" which I'm thinking is either an illiterate tweaker looking to sell their macaw, or they were attempting to book a transvestite from the Adult Services Page and got mixed up somehow.

So what, you ask? What's the point of all of this rambling about exotic birds. I say to you: evolution, and in this case, a truly awesome form of evolution is taking place. You see the only thing idiots enjoy more than buying really expensive birds that they cannot take care of and eventually just set free, is buying really expensive birds that they can't take care of...

...Then teaching them a bunch of really foul language...

...And then setting the birds free again. What's making this even better, is that studies have shown that the foul mouthed birds released from captivity are now teaching their wild brethren all sorts of obscenities and racial epithets to be called out all over the world. So you could be hiking somewhere in the wilds of Borneo someday, when all of a sudden a 4 foot long Macaw starts screeching F-bombs at you, only to have a myriad of birds begin to repeat the call, all across the rain forest.

Think this sort of thing sounds impossible? Heh - it's already begun,

http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/journal/Parrots-and-other-wild-birds-able-to-talk.htm