We never used to have free-living parakeets until the late sixties. The first were seen in Cologne. Then they started to establish themselves in along the Rhine and are now in the whole of Germany’s Southwest. They are loud and noisy and cheeky and bold. And I still quite like them – go figure!

A few years ago a German comic used them as protagonist in a anti-xenophobic:

The brown bird (brown being the colour ascribed to extremist rightwing politics in Germany) complains to the elephant (who, as an aside, is reading Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird) about foreigners taking over the bird feeding system. And that soon they will not be able to understand their own words anymore. To which the parakeet replies in broadest Cologne dialect: “Listen, you squabbler. I am born here and a Cologne native just as you.” Which the brown bird doesn’t understand (proving that he is not a native of Cologne at all). The creator of the comic is Sarah Burrini.

FOWC with Fandango: Bold

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