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Man's parrot helps reveal girlfriend's affair

Sarah Lyall
New York Times News Service
Jan. 17, 2006 05:28 PM

LONDON - "Hiya, Gary!" the parrot trilled flirtatiously whenever Chris Taylor's girlfriend answered her cell phone.

But Taylor, the owner of the parrot, did not know anyone named Gary. And his girlfriend, Suzy Collins, who had moved into his apartment a year earlier, swore that she didn't, either. She stuck to her story even after the parrot, Ziggy, began making lovey-dovey, smooching noises when it heard the name Gary on television.

And so it went until the day just before Christmas when, as Taylor and Collins snuggled on the sofa, Ziggy blurted out, "I love you, Gary," his voice a dead ringer for Collins'.
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"It sent a chill down my spine," Taylor, a 30-year-old computer programmer from Leeds, told reporters on Monday. "I started laughing, but when I looked at Suzy I could tell something was up. Her face was like beet root and she started to cry."

Gary, it turned out, was Collins' former colleague and current secret lover. And not only had Collins, a 25-year-old call-center worker, been cheating on Taylor, but she had been doing it in front of the bird.

"It makes my stomach churn to think about what he might have seen or heard them doing," Taylor said of Ziggy, as reported in The Daily Telegraph and other newspapers.

When it became clear that Ziggy could not be taught to stop saying "Gary," Taylor found a new home for the bird.

"I felt like I'd been stabbed through the heart every time my phone rang or he heard the name on the telly," he said.

Collins and Taylor split up the evening of the "I love you, Gary" incident.

Collins (who has since split up with Gary, too) said that while she was not proud of what had happened, she and Taylor had been having problems and would have broken up anyway. Nor, she said, had she ever taken to the bird, resenting Taylor for preferring to stay home with Ziggy rather than go out with her.

"I'm surprised to hear he's got rid of that bloody bird," Collins was quoted as saying. "He spent more time talking to it than he did to me." She added, speaking of Ziggy: "I couldn't stand him, and it looks now like the feeling was mutual."