Artixes was meditating quietly in his cabin when he received a call on his private console. It was announced by a gentle bell-like tone, accompanied by a softly pulsing green light.

"Yes?" he said, activating the device by mind direction alone. (Most of the equipment used by the Greys can be controlled either "hands on" or by mental visualization and focused thought. Learning to direct the mental commands clearly takes a good deal of training, however, and is one of the most important things a cadet learns in the Academy.)

"We have made some progress here...but..." It was K'tankh, sounding hesitant.

"But what?"

"Well, I don't know if what we have here is quite right. It's not what I expected at all. I think you'd better take a look."

"I'll be right down," said Artixes. "Have you done something about the odor?"

"Don't worry about that. We have the specimen in the main medical room, and there's no odor here. Well, not much, that is."

"Good." Artixes opened the airlock with another mind command and stepped up to the elevator beam. In a moment he was at the entrance to the Med room, opened another of the soundless doors, and...

"FLIP OFF, YOU BOLTHOLE!!!" yelled a surprisingly loud, shrill, and very peculiar voice. There was a ripple of nervous laughter from the little knot of Greys in the Medical staff, who were all gathered cautiously around some small figure which Artixes couldn't quite see. He moved closer. Something decidedly not human was moving around on the specimen table, lunging at anyone who came too near. It had...feathers...and wings...and a strong beak like that of a Denebian Plinch Lizard.

"That is not the Shane," said Artixes, looking quite vexed. "What in the Galaxy did you do?"

"I'm not sure," said K'tankh apologetically. "We found what I was quite certain were some bodily remains of the Shane, and I simply followed standard procedure. I have implanted basic personality type and habitual cultural behaviours, but not restored the memory banks yet. I found the moral imperatives hard to decode, as it appears that the Shane either has very few of them or hasn't used them in some time, but..."

"YER A FLIPPIN' IDIOT!" yelled the feathery creature, which then uttered a series of piercing screeches. It was rapidly scuttling around on the specimen table, threatening to bite whoever came near it, and flapping its wings in a preparatory manner. It might begin flying around the lab at any moment, thought Artixes, but what was it?

"Somebody get a net or something," snapped Artixes. He felt that he was beginning to lose his equanimity, something that Greys value highly, and that just wouldn't do. "Computer! What is this creature? Analyze!"

The computer whirred momentarily. "The creature is a harmless Terran bird popularly known on Earth as a parrot. Parrots come in many varieties. This parrot appears to be from the South American continent, not the African. Parrots are often kept as pets by their human owners. They are quite good at learning and mimicing human speech and a great variety of other sounds, and they are very long lived, as long as a hundred Terran years."

"A parrot???" exclaimed Artixes. "You've put the Shane's personality perameters into a parrot???"

"EAT ME, YOU FlIPPIN' MORONS!" hollered the bird which launched itself suddenly airward and began flying frantically round and round the lab, crashing into the walls, and knocking items off shelves, squawking and swearing loudly all the while. The Greys in the Med crew ran around trying in vain to catch the berserk creature. The truth was, they were all a bit afraid of it despite the computer's reassurances, and they were not too eager to get to grips with it.

Eventually the bird found a secure perch atop a high shelf and it clung there hurling a tirade of obscene abuse at its unwilling hosts.

"Computer, what can be used to best calm down the Shane's personality profile?" chirped Artixes. "Do a scan on all possible attractants and inducements."

"Give him a bottle of beer," said the computer. "Other strong attractants include babes, cigarettes, "dope", and pizza, but beer is the best."

"Do we have any of those things on board?" said Artixes. "Well? Don't just all stare at me like you were paralyzed! Do we?"

K'tankh thought hard about it. "Pizza? No. Cigarettes? No. Dope? Babes? I don't think so." (he wasn't at all sure what "dope" or "babes" even were, but he wasn't about to advertise his ignorance) "Beer? Ummm...yes, I think we still have some which was being held in reserve for when the Shane might visit us again. I believe it's somewhere at the back of the main cargo hold."

"Get that beer!" yelped Artixes. He felt that he was fast losing whatever aplomb he had left.

After what seemed like an age K'tankh returned with a 6-pack of Interstellar Light Beer. The parrot was continuing to defy the Med crew, but its attention fixed on the beer immediately.

"GIMME A FLIPPIN' BEER!" it squawked.

Everyone watched with fascination as G'lnat carefully opened one of the beer bottles and poured the bubbly liquid into a handy lab container. He placed it on the specimen table. The parrot flew down immediately, alighted on the table, and took a beakful of beer.

"About flippin' time," it observed to the crew.

"There," said Artixes. "Another crisis averted. Now, what do you suppose went wrong."

"I can only assume," ventured K'tankh, "that there was also a deceased parrot amongst the garbage. I am sorry to say that I must have recovered part of the parrot's bodily cells instead of those of the Shane. The regeneration and recovery process has now implanted Shane's basic personality...but not his memories...into this cloned parrot."

"Wonderful," said Artixes sarcastically. "Just wonderful. All right, I want you to start looking again through that garbage. Don't assume that any DNA you find is that of the Shane. I don't want to come down here next time and find a dog, a fish, an ostrich, or some other Terran creature that thinks it is the Shane."

"What do we do about the parrot?" asked K'tankh?

"What? Oh....just beam it down to some Earthian pet shop in the middle of the night," said Artixes. "I'm sure you can find one in our computer records, and they won't know the difference when they find it."

("I'm not so sure about that...." thought K'tankh, but he wisely kept his thoughts to himself. It wasn't time to burden an already upset commander with trivial matters that did not impinge on primary mission objectives.)