If you want a pet who can do cool tricks, it’s hard to beat a parrot. Sure, dogs can fetch and play dead, but can they speak English? No, not usually at least.
But you can teach a parrot to repeat what you say, something that can make for a very cool party trick… or get you in trouble with the law!
That’s what one man found out when his loose-lipped bird earned him a surprise visit from the police.
Rambo is a yellow-naped Amazon parrot, who lives in Lake Worth Beach, Florida with owners Gia and Jason. At nearly 40 years old, this parrot is more than a pet—he’s family.
“He’s more an uncle to my kids than he is an actual bird,” Gia told KHOU. “And he thinks he’s human too, so it works out.”
Jason has had Rambo since the bird was only one, and he says as a kid he would teach the parrot funny phrases to prank his parents.
For instance, since Rambo lived in a cage at the time, he taught him to say “Help, help! Let me out!”
But it turns out that, decades later, he still knows that phrase… and is convincing enough to fool the neighbors, who thought it was a real emergency.
“She thought it was a girl being thrown in a pool, and as it kept going on and on she decided she should call the police,” Jason said.
On December 29, Jason was out in the driveway changing the breaks on his wife’s car when four police officers showed up, asking about the “cry for help.”
“I’ll bring out the screamer to you,” Jason told them. He revealed Rambo to the cops, who laughed in relief.
The whole scene was caught on video. You can hear Rambo screaming “Let me out! Ahh!” in the background… and honestly, we might’ve called the cops, too. It’s pretty eerily convincing:
Fortunately, the cops understood, and they all visited the neighbor to explain the situation.
“We had a good talk, a good laugh,” Jason told KHOU.
I guess you can say it was a very successful prank.
Moral of the story: be careful what you teach your parrot! Share this hilarious story!