100 YEARS OLD AND STILL CANNOT FIND HIS HAMMER...

THE conclusion is inescapable: I am going to have to invest in a pet parrot. The whole problem began, you see, when I was thinking of acquiring a pet sloth. I had to give up that idea when I found that sloths may not be kept as pets in this country, no matter how much loving care one may be prepared to bestow on them.

But while I was investigating the laws on sloth imports, I was growing a couple of trees on the Beachcomber estate with the idea of intertwining their branches to grow a rainforest-like canopy for my sloth to hang from.

My neighbours however protested about potential damage to their property from the roots of the tree and restriction of their sunlight by the leaves. I therefore agreed to their requests to cut down my trees when my dreams of sloth ownership were abandoned.

That however created another problem, for the branches of one of the trees had proved a good place from which to hang a bird-feeder at which local species were prone to peck. With the tree cut down, I had to find a new place and a new means of suspension for the bird feeder.

Simple, I thought, I shall bang a nail into the external wall of Beachcomber Towers and hang the feeder from it. The problem that then arose was that I could not find a long and sturdy nail. Some days later, rummaging through a tray of discarded things, I came across a large screw which I thought would do the job even better than a nail.

Hooray, I thought: I’ll just bang the screw in with a hammer, tighten it, if possible, with a screwdriver, hang the feeder from it and my birds will return. Only I couldn’t find a hammer.

That is where the parrot comes in. For I have just come across a paper in the June edition of the journal Animal Behaviour entitled “Safekeeping of Tools in Goffin’s Cockatoos”.

I know nothing about Goffin but his cockatoos, the paper informed me, are a species of Indonesian parrot which have shown the ability not only to use tools but to make their own. Not only that, but when they use the tools to extract food from difficult to reach locations, they have demonstrated that they can eat the food without losing control of the tool.

I felt a sense of chagrin on reading this, as it made me realise that when I last used my hammer, I had probably put it down somewhere when I stopped to have a bite to eat and it is probably still there, wherever that may be.

What the new paper on cockatoos reports however is that far from just being able to keep hold of their tools while eating, they can remember where they left them when they put them down, thus avoiding having to make a new tool for each new job.

I think it would be expecting too much for my pet parrot to improvise a tool to bang a screw into the wall and hang my bird feeder from it before nibbling at the birdseed but I’d be happy to do all that myself for the poor bird, if only I could find my hammer.

If I had a pet Goffin’s cockatoo however it could follow me around and tell me where I left it.