Replying to a message of Cindy Haglund to Bob Ackley:

 CH> Parrots are uncanny how they mimic the human voice and what we say.
 CH> But they're just reacting ... they don't understand what they're
 CH> saying. This is easy to demonstrate.

Years ago a friend of mine had a pet grackle.  The thing just moved in with them
when it was very young.  They could let it out of the house in warm weather and
it'd stay in the yard, and come back in at night.  That thing could mimic a ringing
telephone perfectly.  It finally died of apparently natural causes at the
age of about
five, which, I'm told, is about three years longer than they live in the wild.

--- FleetStreet 1.19+