When my dad was around 50 he got an African gray he always loved parrots his whole life so I was happy for him to get one after his retirement

He named the bird Kevin

My dad taught Kevin a whole vocabulary of words, and he actually trained him to understand the

meaning behind certain words, like hello, what's up, food, thank you, good, and a few others.

My dad passed away at 70, and with that came the time to figure out amongst my siblings and I what would happen to Kevin.

My brother and sister didn't want the responsibility of taking Kevin into their homes.

Plus their spouses were against it too.

But I couldn't bear the idea of giving him away to a new home.

Kevin was and is one of my last connections to my dad.

In a sense, that was his best friend. so I decided I would take him into my home.

I put his cage in the den of my house. My house doesn't have a basement so the

den is considered the lowest level of the house.

Kevin is a moderately noisy bird.

He could be a chatterbox some hours of the day, usually earlier on.

But later in the day and at night he quiets down.

When he's too noisy, I'll throw a blanket over his cage and that normally

quiets him down. I watch TV in the den at night to keep him company. Then around 10

I'll migrate to my room to let him go to sleep. That's pretty much the backstory behind Kevin.

I've been taking care of him for two years now, so I know exactly how he behaves and when he's

acting out of the ordinary. Speaking of out of the ordinary, there was one night in December around 11 p.m.

that Kevin started making sounds while I was trying to sleep.

I sleep with the door open since I live alone and need to be able to hear anything if something's going on in the house.

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