"Alex and Me" summary

In the next portion of this book, Pepperberg begins to talk about her life story, and how she eventually ended up with Alex. She tells us that while she was growing up, her mother and father were hardly around. Her father would usually be working, and when he was home, he was usually working on his hobby, planting flowers. Her mother was cold and distant. Pepperberg states that this was because her mother had her at a young age, and in a sense it ruined her mothers life. On Pepperberg’s fourth birthday, her father gave her a parakeet, whom from then on became her companion. As Pepperberg became older, she grew an interest in science, chemistry to be exact. While in college, although she was doing remarkably in chemistry, she decided to make a career change and study biology. She became interested in human animal communications. She considered herself a bird person, and decided to do her research on birds. She went to a bird breeder for a grey parrot, specifically this breed because it was a breed of parrots, “…that learned most easily and was the clearest talker…(Pepperberg 55). At this breeder she got Alex, the bird she would base her research on.
    Pepperberg wanted to start introducing language to Alex by using labels. For example the first label she introduced to Alex was” paper”. this was because Alex loved to play with paper, and Pepperberg wanted the first label introduced to be associated with something Alex liked. This label was hard for Alex, “…because it is very hard to make a ‘puh’ sound if you don’t have lips” (Pepperberg 63). I completely forgot to mention that before Pepperberg was able to introduce a label to Alex, first she had to earn his trust in order to move forward.
    I made a connection with what I read in these sections, and with what we have been learning in class. When Pepperberg stated that paper was a difficult word for Alex to say, I remembered that “paper” is a bilabial. A bilabial is produced by using both the upper and lower lips, therefore it was hard for Alex to pronounce this sound.