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by Thom Morris

Meet Polly, the 60-year-old blue-fronted Amazon parrot who
speaks Argentine Spanish and has something of an identity
crisis.

Polly lives with owners Cherie Hamlet-Smith and her husband Alan
in Silver Hill Road, Willesborough Lees.

Mrs Hamlet-Smith said: “For years he was fine with everyone but
they say over time female parrots dislike female humans and male
parrots dislike male humans so we think he must be female, although
it’s very difficult to tell.

“The only time he’s locked in his cage is if we have a party or
if we have a lot of ladies who want to use the loo and have to go
past him.

"He can get quite boisterous, plumping his chest out and so
forth.”

Polly, even if “he” is a she, is still referred to in the
masculine.

The parrot has distinctive blue marking on its head and
travelled to Ashford from Buenos Aires in 1972.

“My brother bought him from a man at a station whose wife had a
baby,” said the 73-year-old, who returned from the South American
country in 1965.

"The man didn’t want this baby parrot so my brother brought him
home and I was the first person who ever picked him up."

The stepmother-of-five continued: “He came back in the hold of a
plane and we thought he’d be dead as it’s so cold in there.

“This huge cage came up and we lifted the lid and he started
cursing and swearing; we’ve never heard him do that again.

"We didn’t even teach him any swear words.”

But Polly now enjoys the finer things in life with an open-door
policy on his cage and a trip to the trees in the garden when the
weather is fine.

Mrs Hamlet-Smith, who married Alan, 76, four years ago, added:
“Polly whistles at people going by, if the phone goes we know it’s
ringing because he’s calling 'ola, ola’.

If we’re on the phone he’s chatting away and wants to know
what’s going on. He’s great and I’ll hate it when we don’t have him
any more.

“He doesn’t have free range of the house but if he falls off his
perch he comes walking up to us and lets us know.”