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Woman accuses roommate of 'corrupting' parrot, demands he 'reprogram' her bird.

Woman accuses roommate of 'corrupting' parrot, demands he 'reprogram' her bird.

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When this male roommate feels attacked, he asks Reddit:

AITA for my roommate's parents being overly sensitive about an 'offensive' parrot and for refusing to 'deprogram' its dirty mouth?

Out of desperation, I replied to an ad seeking a roommate to share a studio apartment. I (26M) now share a room with a roommate (24F) and have for about seven months.

She has pets—two ferrets and a parrot. I was worried that the ferrets would smell. They don’t. The parrot has been pretty cool. It’s talkative. And that’s where the problem lies. I work from home and swear when I play video games.

A couple of months in, the parrot will randomly start squawking what sounded like swear words. I actually backed off of using them because I felt bad.

I had friends over about two months back and they were swearing a bit. Welp, the parrot picked right back up.

Except this time, one of my friends (J.T.) decided to keep saying two words and would give the parrot a piece of cracker when she would say it. I told him to stop a couple of times but got distracted by some food on the stove and just let it go.

I have no idea how parrots learn or do things, but it associated J.T. with treats. When J.T. is over, the parrot goes off. It got to the point where it was funny. It “says” other words when my roommate is home.

I was wondering if we would ever have an awkward conversation, but I guess it never said those words with her. I figured she’d find it funny, regardless, but they don’t train you for these things.

I forgot about it. J.T. hasn’t been over lately. Roommate went to see her family (about 7 hours from here) last week. She got back to the apartment last night and started yelling at me for “corrupting” her parrot. I thought she was kidding at first, but she was serious.

Once she calmed down, she explained that her brother visited at the same time. As soon as he walked into he room, the parrot started sounding like a sailor. She said it happened three days in a row and then she locked the parrot in another room.

Her parents were livid with her because unbeknownst to me, this used to be her aunt’s parrot. I’m not sure why that mattered, but it did. So her parents got on her case all week about the parrot and about me being a bad influence and all this stuff about whether I am safe to be around and whatnot.

She showed me a picture of her brother. Yeah…that guy looks a lot like J.T. I tried to explain, but she was having none of it. I texted J.T. He agreed that I could throw him under the bus. She told me I should have stopped him.

I told her I figured it wasn’t a big deal, the parrot would only do it when J.T. was around.

She wants me to figure out a way to “deprogram” the parrot. I will not do that—no, I don’t want you to tell me how. That’s ridiculous.

She thinks I’m wrong for that. Her parents are still mad at her. Her brother thought it was funny and apparently showed his wife when the bird was locked away.

She’s not happy but will get over it. I’m out of here in two months anyway. She just thinks I’m “the worst” and “J.T.” is “awful, too.” I think she’s overreacting.

Let's find out.

enoughbuilder writes:

She's not overreacting. JT messed with with someone else's pet for laughs. That's not OK. You had enough sensibility around this to moderate your own swearing and to think a conversation about it would be awkward.

You didn't stop JT and you didn't talk to her about it. Now you're refusing to take any responsibility with half-arsed excuses. It doesn't matter how many other people find it funny. She doesn't, and YTA.

beveragesandfries makes this point:

yta - softly so. She should've told you that her bird not swearing or using bad language was important to her since she would be bring it around family.

You, seeing JTs behavior should've maybe taken a more serious tone with him to cut that out as soon as you saw the behavior.

Well, is OP TA? Hard to say. Does the roommate need to calm down?

Sources: Reddit
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