Sometimes they have regular fights, but the ngozos generally get the worst of it, and have to fly away, saying all kinds of saucy things to the monkeys.
One evening, flock after flock of ngozos arrived at their place of meeting, which was on an island situated in a large river. There they felt more secure from their enemies in the forest. Many had travelled a long way, but they knew exactly how long it would take them for their homeward journey, and though their wings were tired, they were not exhausted.
After they had alighted, all the ngozos greeted one another, exclaiming, “Glad to see you! Glad to see you! Welcome to our place of meeting.”
Such a pandemonium of ngozos’ voices was heard far and wide in the forest, for at least ten thousand of them were there perched on three or four trees that were close together. They jabbered away at a great rate. A stranger would have thought that they made too much noise to understand one another, as their voices were so confused, and as they were apparently all speaking at the same time. But to the ngozos it was not so; they held a conversation, and one ngozo was talking to one of several of his friends who were listening to him.
Though there were five or six hundred leaders of flocks in this great army of ngozos, each leader knew every member of his flock, and every ngozo knew his leader and recognized his voice, just as he recognized their voices also. He knew the number of his flock, and if one were missing he could tell which, and the other members of the flock likewise. No doubt each ngozo had a name known to the others of the flock.
As they were telling the news, the leader of one flock of ngozos said: “We have come back hungry this evening, for when we came to the trees we had seen loaded with our food of berries and nuts, we found they were all gone, for the monkeys had been there and eaten everything in sight. We were very angry, and during the day we had to fly over the forest and alight here and there to pick what we could. But almost everywhere the monkeys had been before us, and left only unripened berries or nuts, and we had to content ourselves with these, and few at that.”
After hearing this tale of woe, all the ngozos with one voice cried, “We hate the monkeys; ugly monkeys!” The noise was terrific when they said this, for they said these words all at the same time and they repeated them several times in succession, with anger. Oh, what a noise they made!
The ngozos of another flock, when they heard this, said: “We are sorry for you, dear ngozos; it is too bad that you came home hungry. We came to a part of the forest where all the tops of the trees were covered with beautiful ripened fruits; they were fine, and we ate them all day long, and no horrid monkeys came to disturb us. They were busy somewhere else eating our food.”
They called it “our food,” for the parrots considered the berries, nuts, and fruits of the forest as their own, and thought that the monkeys had no business to eat them. The monkeys thought likewise of the ngozos.
Then some ngozos belonging to another flock said: “We flew over a village of human beings, and saw a number of our kin in the place. They could not fly; their wings were cut; we spoke to them, but they could not understand us, neither could we understand them.”