Who's There?

Fourteen years ago I was speaking with a friend, "Dr. Jones," who worked as a therapist.   I happened to know that one of his patients was a mutual friend, “Caleb,” who suffered from a severe mental illness.

One morning Dr. Jones was reviewing a patient’s file prior to a scheduled meeting when his office phone rang.  Caleb sounded frantic as he spoke to his therapist on the other end of the line, “Dr. Jones!  Dr. Jones!  I keep hearing a voice and it’s making me crazy!  Please help me make it stop!”

Dr. Jones spoke calmly to his patient and asked him what the voice was saying.  Caleb replied that he couldn’t understand the voice and repeated his plea for help.   The therapist then gave his patient some advice he hoped would help, and told him “If that doesn’t work, try to figure out what the voice is telling you and call me back.”

At the conclusion of the phone call Dr. Jones returned to addressing the needs of the patient in his office.  An hour later Caleb called back, “Dr. Jones! Dr. Jones! The voice hasn’t stopped and I still don’t know what it’s saying, please help me!”

At this point Dr. Jones became very concerned and assured his patient that he was going to make the hour-long drive to see Caleb at home.  When he stepped from his car into Caleb’s front yard Dr. Jones heard a voice.  He told me his first thought was, “Oh no!  My job’s finally getting to me.”  Then he realized that the voice was coming from the side of Caleb’s house.

It turned out Caleb was not having a setback in his therapy.  An escaped parrot was sitting in Caleb’s bathroom window talking.  As you can imagine Caleb was quite relieved when Dr. Jones discovered the problem and chased the parrot away.