I mentioned orson bean in a comment on a post elsewhere on this site and in my comment i sort of indicated that i might tell y'all a joke i heard bean tell on tv well over half a century ago. i think now is as good a time as any. needless to say i won't be telling it word for word as bean did, but it is essentially the same joke.

a lonely man went to a pet shop and asked the owner what kind of pet he should get to keep him company. the pet shop owner said "i've got a parrot here. you can teach him to talk and then he'll be a dandy companion." the lonely man agreed to give the parrot a try, paid the owner and took his new pet home.

the man and the parrot became best friends. everywhere in the house the man went, the parrot followed, and could often be found on the man's shoulder, snuggling up against his cheek. they'd watch tv together. they ate together. they were quite close, and the man quickly got over his disappointment that the parrot never did utter a word. it didn't matter. they were besties.

but one day the parrot became distant, sullen, sulky. his feathers even began to lose their luster. when they actually began to fall out, the man decided to take action. he took his buddy back to the pet shop and asked the owner's advice.

the owner reassured the man, "i know exactly what's wrong! don't worry. your parrot isn't sick. he just needs a lady parrot. as it happens, i have one here, and for ten bucks, i will allow you to put the two of them together for a little private time, and soon your little guy will be right as rain."

the man gave the pet shop owner ten bucks and they took the two birds into the back room, put them in a nice, spacious cage and covered the cage with a dark cloth, for privacy. then the two men repaired to the front of the shop to wait. they began to make small talk but they didn't get far before they heard a terrible racket from the back of the shop; there was an awful lot of squawking going on. they rushed back there to find feathers all over the floor around the cage. the owner lifted up the black cloth and the two men were astonished to find the female parrot had no feathers left anywhere on her; she'd been completely plucked. the male parrot declared, "for ten bucks i want her naked!"

g