The Megalopolitan Parrot

Polishing Pedro's vocabularly

Today's Wall Street Journal eulogizes an eccentric Des Moines zookeeper named Bob Elgin.  I liked this part:

When Pedro, the zoo's macaw, became notorious for spouting profanity it learned from workmen at the zoo, Mr. Elgin gave him a cleaned-up vocabulary by reading to him from Oswald Spengler's "Decline of the West."

"He's the most erudite parrot in the world," including words like transcendental and megalopolitan, Mr. Elgin boasted in an article...