At the British zoo Lincolnshire Wildlife Centre, keeping some of the bird residents’ vocabulary limited to G-rated language has proven challenging — and park employees had to go as far as separating five African grey parrots to squash the swearing.
According to the Associated Press, Billy, Eric, Tyson, Jade, and Elsie — who all were welcomed to the park in August — were removed from each other’s presences since they were encouraging each other to curse and rally in expletive-filled rants together.
“We are quite used to parrots swearing, but we’ve never had five at the same time,” Steve Nichols, the zoo’s chief executive, told the outlet. “Most parrots clam up outside, but for some reason these five relish it.”
Though most visitors who overheard the colorful language laughed it off — “When a parrot tells you to ‘f— off’ it amuses people very highly; it’s brought a big smile to a really hard year,” said Nichols — the zoo decided to take measures to nip the behavior in the bud.
The five parrots were spread out to different areas in the zoo so that they don’t, according to Nichols, “set each other off.”
“Some visitors found it funny but with kids visiting at weekends, we decided to move them.
“I’m hoping they learn different words within colonies – but if they teach the others bad language and I end up with 250 swearing birds, I don’t know what we’ll do,” he added.
The birds are not the first at the park to cause a stir.
