The Mrs and I were wondering back from lunch by the Avon and came upon a car park at the edge of the woods where three boys cried out “help there is an escaped parrot, can you help us?” To misquote my father (a Greats Man) “A PPE man can turn his hand to anything” although catching rather confused and slightly injured escaped parrots in Bristol car parks is not my normal line of expertise.
As I got down on my front and peered under whichever car the parrot opted to hide under the Mrs called the Royal Society for Protection of Birds (RSPB). “Sorry madam that is not the sort of thing we deal with.” Hmmm, I guess the RSPB is too busy campaigning against global warning to do anything like actually protect a bird in need.
So what about the RSPCA I suggested? Again no luck. They said that we should try the Old Bill. FS we know that the Filth will be far too busy arresting folk for calling a Police Horse gay or for tweeting out comments t folks in Liverpool about how all scousers are sympathy milking, workshy, welfare addicts ( which they are) to assist.
And so as I scrabbled underneath another car and the parrot eluded me again, the Mrs tried another RSPCA number. Eventually she was told “it will probably find its way home but if you do catch it we will come and collect but we are massively under-resourced”
The first comment is a lie. The parrot appeared slightly injured and so will scrabbled around for food before almost certainly going from being a sick parrot to a dead one as one of the creatures of the wood (probably foxy woxy) enjoys an unusual breakfast. The Mrs is a townie and might have bought the RSPCA line, I grew up in the boonies and so did not know how to break t to her that it was untrue.
As for under-resourced? You are pulling my plonker. The RSPCA spends tens of millions on administrative bollocks and on campaigning to have anyone vaguely associated with fox hunting sent to the salt mines of Islington for political re-education.
As I have noted even before I met the sick parrot now preparing for an inevitable grisly death neither the RSPB nor RSPCA are any longer fit for purpose.