The government are appealing for calm and credulity today in the wake of a mass breakout of interrogation-parrots from Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre, Bedfordshire.The estimated 700 parrots, some of whom are parakeets, work at the illegal holding facility for the Borders and Immigration Agency, helping contractors to get the right answers from refugees - the right answers to help them. They should not be approached, police warn, as they are fluent in French, Turkish, Aramaic, Chinese, Portuguese, Pashto, Somali, Tagalog and Classical Greek, can whistle out a rough approximation of Land of Hope and Glory, and are very tame and pretty.
“They are also enormous fibbers,” said Lin Homer, head of the stern agency. “Members of the public who run into them, whether individually or en flock, are advised to place their fingers firmly in both ears and gossip loudly about a favourite celebrity in order to drown out any unfounded impressions of abuse which these accomplished mimics may chirrup.”
“Parrots are naturally aggressive conversationalists, with a notoriously broad conception of ‘good practice’,” Home Secretary Jacqui Smith cautioned. “Walkers should not be alarmed to hear squawked threats, or surprised if a swarm of iridescent interrogators should descend upon them, jostling them on all sides as it shouts that they are ‘black monkeys, ugh, ugh, ugh’, picks their pockets, denies them legal representation, jails them indefinitely without charge or trial along with their children in a known fire hazard, censors their access to the outside world, ignores requests for medical care, or tries to bundle them - quite hard - onto a plane bound for Baluchistan. These habits were almost certainly acquired in the wild, and have nothing to do with us.”
Smith was in no doubt, however, that the feathered facilitators were all still fit for purpose, although she was unable to say, at the present juncture, what that purpose was.
Meanwhile the BBC have replaced their regular schedule with a day of shows on the unreliability of budgie witnesses, interspersed with special features on the tendency of mynah birds to fantasise.
In a press conference this morning, the Chief Constable of Bedfordshire Police, Carl Asphyxix, backed the minister’s warning over the avian aides, adding that rumours of leading questions and high pitched ethnic slurs echoing round local woods were all hearsay, “but still it’s best if members of the public stay clear for the time being, just in case there is anything else dangerous happening there which might be a danger to them,” he said, eyeballing reporters as he absentmindedly flicked the safety catch of his taser on and off.
Prime Minister David Brown was unavailable for comment, as he was busy unveiling holocaust memorials today, lest history parrot itself, and taking after-dinner stands against tyrants in oppressed – but safe – lands far away.
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