A talking parrot promises the carpenter it will guard the shop; when thieves come, silence turns out to be the loudest alarm.
The carpenter taught his parrot to say, “Who goes there?” in a voice large enough to rattle cups. Customers laughed, thieves took notes, and the parrot enjoyed rehearsals where nothing terrible happened. One night the shutters failed a test the carpenter had not assigned, and a pair of thieves slid inside with feet that disrespected wood. The parrot watched from its perch and forgot every word it knew. The thieves took tools that had learned the shapes of many hands. In the morning the carpenter discovered emptiness arranged where work used to be. He shouted at the parrot because grief likes a target. The bird drooped as if feathers could apologize.
A judge was summoned because men love narratives that end in stamps. He asked the parrot to speak and it said nothing. He asked the carpenter to breathe and he did, which helped. “The law rewards prevention,” said the judge, “but it also respects learning.” He ordered the neighbors to lend tools for a month and the carpenter to teach the parrot a new phrase: “Wake the street.” They practiced. The next time a shutter stuttered at midnight, the parrot did not attempt conversation. It screamed a wordless siren that informed the neighborhood in the old alphabet of danger. Lamps bloomed like flowers. The thieves ran through a street that had decided against them.
The carpenter replaced the empty cage with a perch near the door and built a wooden plaque that said, “Silence is not guilt; sometimes it is a draft version of courage.” The parrot never mastered language beyond a few crisp warnings and a perfect imitation of the judge clearing his throat. The shop thrummed back into its rhythm, and the neighbors discovered they liked the sound of a street that knows its own voice. Children grew up understanding that failure is not the end of training but the start of a better alarm.
