Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened

A family friend purchases a toy parrot for Allie and her sister when they are kids. The parrot can record and playback any sound. They use it to prank their mother and scare the family cat. The toy makes Allie and her sister feel powerful in a way they never have before. In a series of illustrations on pages 236-239, the girls play back everything their mother says when she tells them to go to bed.

The children record the parrot saying the word “poop” over and over, and they annoy their mother with it. One day, the parrot mysteriously stops working—a fate suffered by every other irritating toy the children have owned. Neither their mother nor their father knows how to fix it, so the kids take the toy to their aunt, who lives nearby. Their aunt figures out that a wire has been cut inside the toy, so she fixes it for the children. Allie and her sister then record the sound of the garbage disposal in their kitchen sink and play it back in the middle of the night to prank their parents. After that incident, the parrot disappears forever.

However, the children discover that they can record a family voicemail message of the vacuum cleaner whirr.