Talking birds aren’t for everyone. They’re an upward of forty year commitment to what is basically a flying toddler. I had inherited my family’s parrot, Frida Macawlo, once my father passed and looked after her another twenty years. She passed away at forty-seven.

To say I was devastated was an understatement. I perhaps grieved her more than I did my father. She was uncomplicated. She had been around in my family longer than me. There are photos of me in a diaper trying to reach her cage. Apparently she bit me on several occasions. She would greet me when I got home from school everyday with a peppy “hola!”. Even when I moved out and began my law degree she still recognized me every few months when I would visit. Macaws are marvelous creatures. I think their intelligence is vastly underestimated.

A few months after Frida passed I was in a slump. I had no wife or children to speak of. No one to come home to after a long day of family law in Tijuana. It is unforgiving work. I’m no fool to try and pursue a different branch of law in my state. The corruption would be disheartening. My older sister was wise. She chose to cross the border (legally) to study and practice criminal law in Arizona.

It was her suggestion that I get a new parrot. I was apprehensive at first. Another five decades with a bird? I’d be well into my seventies by the time it croaked. She suggested a cat or dog instead. No. I saw enough feral cats and dogs daily. They were overgrown rats.

But then my younger brother, having apparently devised this plan with my sister, gave a rescue center my details with the request to keep a look out for birds. A green Amazon parrot had been found injured and needed a home. He spoke, so they knew he’d been raised in captivity and he’d probably struggle in the wild.

Scarface had been found with a cut on the right side of his face and a broken wing. He was estimated to be between five and ten. He needed me. Really, I probably would need him too.

We struggled to connect at first. Parrots are very loyal creatures and bond with one person. He would screech at me when I brought him his food. Poor boy was probably terrified by all the changes in his life. I’d assumed he’d escaped or been abandoned by his previous owner. I hated to see such a beautiful creature neglected.

Our breakthrough was Doritos. He saw me come home, exhausted, and bring out a giant bag of Doritos, then jump in halfway through an episode of Law & Order I’d been watching the night before. Scarface recognized the crinkle of the bag and demanded a corn chip. They’re not good for birds. I gave him two.

After that he was chatty. Perhaps the reminder of his old life allowed him to open up. His vocabulary was interesting. No “hola!” when I came home. Instead, he would say “¿quiúbole?” like some chulo. He also always commented when I was cooking with the frying pan “huele a tocino” (smells like bacon). I would laugh and agree, even if it wasn’t bacon. He liked the taste of meat which was odd. I tried to keep his meat intake to a minimum given the salt content, but he would try to steal it off my plate in the most amusing manner. I loved his presence.

I was alerted to Scarface’s eccentric imitations by my cleaner. She told she’d been given quite a fright by a man screaming for help, only to find Scarface laughing to himself. He realized it scared her and kept screaming. Not a bird screech, a man’s scream. She told me she heard the bird begging someone to stop, telling them that’s what they got, and laughing. A whole conversation with himself parroting some unknown prior interaction. I assumed the previous owner had exposed Scarface to some action movies and didn’t think much of it.

I only started to find it unnerving when he said “sin cara para ti” (no face for you) while I was brushing my teeth. Then he screamed. Then he laughed. I would think the parrot was inhabited by Legion if for some reason Satán found the desire to possess a bird.

My little brother’s teenage son took a fancy to Scarface when I paid him to look after him for the weekend. I was off to Mazatlán for a wedding. I think the idea of being left alone with a whole house to himself also encouraged his engagement with the parrot. I checked in twice. On FaceTime I would say hola to Scarface and he would look around confused before asking “¿quién es?”. He was a smart bird but didn’t grasp the concept of screens. My nephew promised me he was going to teach Scarface a whole new English vocabulary. He wanted the bird to be bilingual.

His attitude had shifted dramatically upon my return. He was paler than a corpse when he handed me back the house keys. I asked him what was wrong and he lied and said nothing. Scarface was still in equally good spirits. He was climbing on the the lamp in the kitchen singing to himself. Perhaps he’d done his man screaming act for my nephew and it had freaked him out.

My nephew revealed the truth to me several weeks later. He’d been sharing Scarface content with his friends on Instagram and Snapchat. Someone had recognized him. I didn’t understand how a parrot could be recognized until he told me the more explicit details.

You see, this bird has made several appearances in LiveLeak videos from a few years back. Cartel related content. I don’t want to describe the content too much because I don’t want you searching it. It doesn’t benefit the victims for you to watch them get tortured and murdered (if you post a link to any of it in the comments I'll report you). Still, my nephew showed me one video. In concrete basement or garage a man was headless and another man was in the process of being burned with a kitchen torch. I hated to see the footage, but the tiny green blur in the background caught my eye. The screaming continued after the man died. It was coming from a parrot. The men in the video laughed and mentioned how the charred skin smelled like bacon.

I threw up.

I told my nephew to never watch anything like this again or he could go to jail for possession of objectionable content. Perhaps harsh, but I didn’t want him to become numb to this content. He needed to know these were real men with families who were being given such humiliating and horrendous deaths. I then watched one final video titled “Grooving Chico”. A dead man without skin on his face. The green parrot was standing on his chest bobbing up and down to a popular song from the 90s (I won’t name to avoid getting it trending for all the wrong reasons).

I didn’t want to believe it was Scarface, but perhaps he lived up to his name. To be sure, I played the song off my phone. Sure enough, he started bobbing along in the same way as the video.

It turned out my parrot had belonged to someone in a cartel or gang. That person had lost him either upon their own chaotic death or by accident. I’d never know for sure and I didn’t want to.

My problem was the intelligence of Scarface. I do believe animals are innocent, but Scarface was smart. He knew what death was. He knew what pain was. He had been trained to think such horrific things were normal. He danced like a monkey attached to an accordion for monsters while men died. That was the world he came from.

But what was I to do with him? I couldn’t possibly listen to him replicate the screams of men he watched die with such glee now that I knew the source. I made my nephew keep it a secret. His father would want the bird killed or released outside. I had to be more rational than that.

“Tocino,” Scarface stated proudly as I did, in fact, fry him up a slice of bacon. The aviary he was going to wouldn’t be giving him anymore bad treats. I’d located a crazy vieja who had over fifty birds she’d rescued. I told her Scarface’s story (but left out the gross parts which may have made her faint) and she assured me he wouldn’t say such things in her house. There were too many other birds to interact with to want to speak Spanish.

She renamed him Lázaro. I give her a bit of money every month to feed her birds for my own conscience. The videos I saw in seeking out Scarface’s identity haunt me even if they aren’t surprising. You know these sorts of things happen, but seeing it filmed and having a parrot replicate someone’s torturous final moments really tears away any ignorance I wished to have.

Lázaro is doing fine. I have not visited him out of fear he will revert to his old vocabulary. I miss him despite his short stay in my home. I feel we could’ve been lifelong companions if things had been different.

Months later fate handed me a new set of cards. A grey kitten with gooey eyes had gotten itself stuck in my walls after apparently sneaking under the house. Once I got it out I saw how sick it was and took it to the vet. An expensive visit for a stray kitten. They told me if I took it to a pound or rescue center it would likely be put down now that it was missing and eye and had FIV. It seemed the option was I take the kitten or it died. That’s how I ended up with Cyclops.

My sister was right about getting a dog or cat. At the very least don’t mimic the atrocities men can commit to one another.