He continued: "We take care of mishaps like this all the time."

I nodded, frowning. "Please do take care of Squawky," I said. "Sure, he's just a parrot, but I love him as if he were a real boy."

The man nodded. I noticed, and not for the first time, how unpleasantly he smelled - sort of like rancid onion yogurt.

"I'll take care of Squawky, all right," he added, taking extra care to pronounce 'take care' so that I could hear the quotation marks slotting into place like little nails in the wood of his sentence. This metaphor distracted me for a moment and I realized I hadn't heard him.

"What?" I said.

"Don't worry," he said. "We take care of this sort of thing all of the time. Let me tell you, your parrot will never be possessed by the demon lord Adremelech again."

I nodded, trying not to breath in while standing in the odiferous miasma that surrounded him like a bun around a bacon double cheeseburger.

"Done deal," he said, and walked out of my house and my life.

"Goodbye, Squawky," I said sadly.

I never saw him again.