The Saddest Perfect Pet in the World

Today is my 3700th post, and I am thinking today about loneliness.  It is so easy to be lonely in the midst of celebration, of families reuniting, of people wishing each other Happy Holidays.

And here you are.

Here we are on Christmas Eve, and I am running out of time to write about the Perfect Polly.

Would you consider keeping a plastic pet shaped like a parakeet?

Back around 2013,  I was shopping  and saw this box.  It advertised something called "Perfect Polly".  You can see it in action in a video below.  It bills itself the "Amazingly Lifelike Parakeet".  And you don't even have to feed it (or, for that matter, clean up after it).

This is what Perfect Polly looks like.

I kept parakeets as pets for many years (although I haven't recently) and my interpretation of this plastic parakeet is - just no.

 I think Perfect Polly misses an important point.  In a way, it's all about lonliness, something that I think about more and more as I age (I'm a senior citizen now).

The holidays are a sad time for so many people.  And many seniors are alone, due to death, family far away, or for other reasons.  Perhaps one in three elderly suffer from loneliness.

I think it is part of human nature to need to connect with animals in some way.  Not everyone has a pet, and certainly many cultures can not (or do not have the resources to) pamper their pets the way we do in the west.  However, even if the pets must be working animals, we are still interacting.  And, I've known many people who mourn the death of their pet the way they would a member of their families.

I can't see a pet made of plastic.  And I couldn't see this as any kind of holiday gift.  But that's just me.  Still, I recently looked on Amazon and it was "out of stock" indefinitely.  I wonder if it is even made any more.

I found this interesting list of how to reach out to people who do not choose to be alone.

I couldn't see my late mother in law, for example, being kept company by a battery operated plastic something.  Even if it doesn't have to be fed or cleaned up after.

Perhaps the saddest thing in the world is that someone had to make a product like this.  No one should be alone during the holidays.

Or left to be entertained by a plastic bird.