Parrot Tattoos

Parrot Tattoos - “Polly wants a cracker.” The catchword is synonymous with ‘parrot’, specially digit that sits on a pirate’s shoulder, as was made famous in Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic story, Treasure Island (1883). Long John Silver, the one-legged pirate, had his parrot, ‘Capt. Flint’, who may not have been the first parrot to be related with the name ‘Polly’, but he certainly popularized it. And Polly certainly ensured that the parrot would embellish an iconic symbol of the pirate tradition.
Loud, bright coloured, and defiant, the parrot doesn’t do such more than shriek, squawk, and look fantastic. Or so we think. In the wild, flocks of parrots haw have highly developed social structures. In art, the parrot has long been employed to light up otherwise drab landscapes. Without such effort on its part, the parrot strikes us as exotic, intelligent, regal, oracular, bolshy and profane. And they make striking tattoo designs. Some of the more popular species featured in parrot tattoos have been the vividly colored Macaws, the spectacularly decorated Cockatoos and Cockatiels, Parakeets, Lovebirds, Canaries and Budgies.
Since parrots utter only text they’ve heard, and repeat them without some understanding, the parrot’s intelligence is seen as ‘uncertain’, a trait that would be present in some parrot symbol. Consequently, a ‘parrot’ has come to mean a mortal who imitates text and actions without comprehending them. Another kind of ‘parrot’ is a gossip, a hapless spreader of rumours. That’s not to feature Parrot People don’t benefit from this neurosis, since they are able to ignore their possess problems by centering on the lives of other people. Furthermore, every language (some would say, every thought) is second-hand, which, if true, would make us every parrots. Blessed is the mortal who realizes this and blissfully proceeds through chronicle performing acts of parrotry and regurgitating the world’s vast and colourful lexicon of clichés.
‘Pissed as a parrot’ is an endearing term that comes to us from Queensland, Australia, where parrots occasionally enjoy a fasting of fermented fruit. While the parrot symbol permeates much of Australian life, they haven’t gone as farther as the citizens of the Commonwealth of Dominica, who hit place the parrot on their domestic flag. A Sisserou Parrot stands on a savvy decorated by ten lime-green stars. A symbol of flight toward greater heights and the fulfilment of aspirations, that’s the Dominican analyse of the parrot.

A final word on ‘Polly’ the parrot – it seems to hit been derivative from ‘Pol’, meaning ‘Paul’. English author, Ben Johnson, in his 1611 play Volpone, was the first to portray a parrot named Pol, which, at the time, was a variant of ‘Paul’. Since then, it became common practice to name parrots and macaws ‘Polly’.

A word of caution to would-be keepers of exotic birds – read up before you purchase one. Most kept birds die well before their time. The average chronicle span of the larger parrots is 75 years, but cod to their sometimes aggressive, noisy, biting behavior - all of which is dead natural - some of them die of neglect and abuse. The termination has been the establishment of numerous parrot shelters in some urban centers. Even more troubling is that some parrots are protected species, and the public's craving for exotic birds had led to serious declines in wild populations and the loss of some birds in banned smuggling and bird-trafficking operations. Perhaps no other group of birds has been as exploited as hit parrots, and a parrot tattoo is an homage to one of the most colourful characters in the avian world and certainly in literature.