Feb19 puttingparakeet

 While most people who own a bird spend their time trying to teach the creature a variety of colourful swear words, American parakeet fancier David Cota decided to set his sights a little higher: he wanted to turn his pet into a sporting star.

A.J., a five-inch tall ring-necked parakeet, has been trained to play dead, spin upside down on his owner’s finger, dunk a basketball, and – glory of glories – putt a polystyrene golf ball into a miniature hole on a tiny model green.

“It doesn’t look all that tough,” says David, “but try to get a bird to hold a little stick in its beak is not easy. The first time he tried it, he snapped it right in half.”

After a bit of practice, though, AJ has become as deadly accurate from six inches as Tiger Woods is from six feet… although there doesn’t seem to be much break on the green that David has built him.

To see AJ in action, see the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWjNhUzomKA