Parrots - Michael Sheridan

The tour bus continued to trundle down the forest road.  The tour guide continued to trundle through his spiel.

'Of course,' continued the guide, 'those of us who have lived here for some time, think that having a great forest like this, on an artificial floating island, hundreds of kilometres from land is a huge achievement…'

Larry had started to zone out.

'The engineers,' continued the guide, 'of course, realised that the forest couldn’t thrive…'

Larry groaned internally.  He’d inadvertently paid attention for a moment.

'Of course,' continued the guide 'without diverse flora and fauna….'

Larry had become convinced that this was the most boring tour he had ever been on.  And, thought Larry, ‘of course and of course and of course’ and if he parrots ‘of course’ one more time I may just keel over.

'Of course, parrots,' continued the guide, 'were naturally, if you’ll pardon my pun, an essential introduced animal in the environment we have created.'