My parents have a 31 year old African Grey. S/he (we always called him Chuck, but then he laid an egg 2 years ago) speaks in my late grandmother’s voice, my father’s voice, and my mother’s voice. He’ll live to about 60. Whoever inherits him will live with the voices of the long departed for another 20 years or more.
That’s nowhere near vague enough for my newspaper. They’d go with “Widow Wants To Hear Dead Husband’s Voice Again”
Reminds me of a story I heard recently about the widow of the man whose voice said “Mind the gap!” on the London underground. They had replaced the recording in almost all of the stations, and she would go down to one of the last ones, just to hear his voice.
They decided to reinstate it at Embankment, just for her: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-21719848. Pretty sweet story.
Edited to add this, which has another poignant snippet at the end about another voice used: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/transport/9918662/Mind-the-Gap-voice-restored-to-London-Underground-after-widow-missed-her-husbands-voice.html
African Greys are freaky smart. I have a friend who is quite the bird lady; her African Grey carries on entire conversations with her and it is not some parlor trick; it’s a real conversation. I have no idea why people question animals abilities to converse in the way humans do, because you only have to spend a little time around one of this critter to know it understands what he is saying. Wow; that would be super strange if it actually spoke in your dead husband’s voice. It creeps me out to think about it, though I imagine it is comforting to the widow.
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