"who´s laughing now"

A constant whistling from a dairy plant below our apartment was driving me crazy...It started at around 8am till 5pm. I could no longer enjoy watching telly, playing music, with the annoying whistling in the background. It wasn´t just the odd whistle, it was the whole repertoire of "street whistling" ranging from the "taxi-hail" to the "wolf-whistle" and many others. I first thought it was more than one worker, obviously bored, probably deaf, competing with each other, but the whistles were emanating from the same general area.

One sunny morning, as I prepared my cup of coffee, the dreadful noise started again. I opened the kitchen window, looked down at the dairy yard and shouted at a few workers milling around "STOP THAT F#"$%#G WHISTLING". They all looked up at me and chuckled... you know, like a half-laugh, then carried on with their chores. I slammed shut the window and went back to my coffee with that smug feeling of "I told them off, I did". Within seconds the whistling restarted, more intense than ever, the whole repertoire of irritating sounds. I opened the kitchen window and asked the same workers in the yard  if they thought it funny in some way to annoy the local residents with moronic whistling. They looked up in unison and all but one, burst into laughter.

I was fuming by that stage, promptly got dressed and marched down to the yard. At the security gate office, a young guard was reading the newspaper as I asked him who the site manager was. He gave me the name and asked if I wanted to see him. I said YES, I want to complain about the whistling from one or more of your employees that's driving me, and no doubt the local residents, crazy. He looked at me with a surprised half-smile and said "It´s not us, it´s the parrot below your balcony."

I looked up, stunned, embarrassed, call it what you like, at the huge green cage with its amazonian feathered resident, and walked away, quietly, trying to blend into the background, feeling such a fool....