Summary

This story begins with a parrot narrator remembering a conversation her owner and her owner’s ex-husband had years ago. The owner asks how her partner feels about getting married. He says that he feels a bit sad when he passes a beautiful woman on a street. In response, the parrot’s owner says she thinks someone “commit[s] to marriage with both eyes open, then you shut one eye for ever after” (234). She then compares marriage to George Shaw’s platypus, which she describes as “half a duck sewn to half an otter” (234). The parrot explains the metaphor, saying “marriage would force [her owner] to metamorphose so that she was half-duck, half-otter, always partly a stranger to herself” (234).

The parrot’s narration then skips to her owner’s divorce from her husband. In response to her divorce, the...