Life imitates ... Monty Python?
Woman takes pet shop to court over dead parrot
October 14, 1997
Web posted at: 7:48 p.m. EDT (2348 GMT)
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (CNN) -- It's no Monty Python joke: A
Swedish woman is taking a local pet shop to court for selling
her a parrot that died after a couple of days. The shop says
the bird may just have been sleeping.
The woman paid 4,900 crowns ($650) for the parrot last year.
But a few days after she took the bird home it started
behaving strangely, becoming apathetic and then losing its
sense of balance so it could not sit on its perch.
She took the parrot to a nearby vet but it died a few hours
later, Swedish news agency TT reported on Tuesday. She
immediately buried her dead pet.
When the woman went back to the pet shop to complain, the
shop owner refused to believe the parrot was dead, because
the customer could not produce the body, and said maybe it
had just been sleeping.
The case, which now goes to a local court in Malmo in
southern Sweden, reads like a scene from the former British
TV series "Monty Python's Flying Circus." The comedy troupe
once performed a skit in which a pet shop owner argues with a
customer over whether a recently perished parrot is dead or
merely sleeping.
Reuters
contributed to this report.