Polly want a cracker? Why you should never cross a parrot

In Wednesday's New York Times Sarah Lyall told a most amusing story about a relationship gone south in a hurry because of a parrot.

Read it and learn why perhaps you're better off with a finch or a goldfish.

Kiss and Tell: She Kisses and the Parrot Tells

"Hiya, Gary!" the parrot trilled flirtatiously whenever Chris Taylor's girlfriend answered her cellphone.

But Mr. Taylor, the owner of the parrot, did not know anyone named Gary.

And his girlfriend, Suzy Collins, who had moved into his apartment a year earlier, swore that she didn't, either.

She stuck to her story even after the parrot, Ziggy, began making lovey-dovey, smooching noises when it heard the name Gary on television.

And so it went until the fateful day just before Christmas when, as Mr. Taylor and Ms. Collins snuggled together on the sofa, Ziggy blurted out, "I love you, Gary," his voice a dead ringer for Ms. Collins's.

"It sent a chill down my spine," Mr. Taylor, a 30-year-old computer programmer from Leeds, told British reporters on Monday.

"I started laughing, but when I looked at Suzy I could tell something was up. Her face was like beet root and she started to cry."

Gary, it turned out, was Ms. Collins's former colleague and current secret lover.

And not only had Ms. Collins, a 25-year-old call-center worker, been cheating on Mr. Taylor, but she had been doing it in front of the bird.

"It makes my stomach churn to think about what he might have seen or heard them doing," Mr. Taylor said of Ziggy, as reported in The Daily Telegraph and other newspapers.

He had owned Ziggy, named after the David Bowie character, since Ziggy was a chick, eight years ago, and looked on with pride as Ziggy began mimicking everything he heard - the television, people's voices, the vacuum cleaner, the doorbell.

But when it became clear that Ziggy could not be taught to stop saying "Gary," Mr. Taylor found a new home for the bird through a dealer.

"I felt like I'd been stabbed through the heart every time my phone rang or he heard the name on the telly," he said.

As for Ms. Collins, she and Mr. Taylor split up the evening of the "I love you, Gary" incident.

Tracked down by the newspapers at the home of friends, Ms. Collins (who has since split up with Gary, too) said that while she was not proud of what had happened, she and Mr. Taylor had been having problems and would have broken up anyway.

Nor, she said, had she ever taken to the bird, resenting Mr. Taylor for preferring to stay home with Ziggy rather than go out with her.

"I'm surprised to hear he's got rid of that bloody bird," Ms. Collins was quoted as saying.

"He spent more time talking to it than he did to me."

She added, speaking of Ziggy: "I couldn't stand him, and it looks now like the feeling was mutual."

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With a pet like that, who needs a security camcorder clock?