Your Wee Parrot Lays A Wee Parrot Egg. Do You Eat It?

My neighborhood is home to a Parrot Man. Weather permitting, the Parrot Man arrives at the diner around the corner toting a canvas wagon. In the wagon is his parrot, attached to a small parrot leash. The Parrot Man eats his breakfast on the diner patio, feeding his parrot small bites of potato and nodding at passersby. I love the Parrot Man, but I know very little about parrots. That's why I was surprised to hear about a Redditor who recently made waves after snacking on a homegrown parrot egg.

Newsweek reports that Redditor Asatoaf helped herself to a freshly lain parrot egg, posting about her snack on Reddit's Mildly Interesting forum last Thursday. "My parrot laid an egg," Asatoaf wrote. "It's unfertilized so I ate it." Simple and straightforward! Free egg!

After fielding a number of comments about the snack, Asatoaf went into more detail about the egg. "Texture: A little bit softer than a hard-boiled egg. Taste: just like a hard-boiled egg, not bad." She also revealed that the parrot only lays around three eggs each year. (This is common, according to this parrot resource.)

Seems simple enough—of course, this is Reddit we're talking about, so people had opinions. "This is just so weird to me," one commenter wrote. "There's obviously nothing wrong going on here but yet still can't help feel taboo vibe." Another commenter explained that the "taboo vibe" may have been related to the bird's relative intelligence. "Parrots can talk," the commenter wrote. "Imagine eating the egg of a creature that can ask you how it tastes."

I don't see anything wrong with snackin' on a free egg—as long as you wash it before indulging. After all, pet birds don't pay rent. They gotta earn their keep somehow. If only my beagle could learn how to pull his weight around here.