Dreamland -- The Red Parrot

Then there’s a red parrot flying around on the inside of the same vast building. The king starts talking about how the world used to be covered in these red parrots, and now they are rare. “So,” he says, pulling out his rifle, “be sure to pick this one up when I shoot it. It’s quite valuable.”

I open the door so that more insects to feed the parrot can fly in, and maybe, I hope, the parrot will fly out before he or she is killed. Outside, on lawns and fields covered by rope nets, there are enormous numbers of red parrots and indeed it seems that the red parrot, once endangered, is coming back.

The implication is that therefore it’s okay for the king to shoot at the parrot, but in fact he never does.

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