| The Bills Family |
| Doug, Cathie, Jenna, Ashleigh and Shannon |
By Doug Bills
Wednesday, July 31, 2002A grief stricken woman walks into a veterinary clinic with a very dead parrot in her hands.
She gently lays the dead bird on an examining table in front of the vet who looks at the woman quizzically. "There is something wrong with my parrot" the woman exclaims.
The vet looks at the dead parrot, and pokes it with his finger. The bird does not react. He looks at the woman who's on the verge of tears, shakes his head and says "Its dead".
"How can you be sure! All you did was poke it, perhaps it could be in coma!" the woman exclaims. The vet rolls his eyes and walks out the back.
He shortly returns leading a Labrador dog on leash, he motions the dog up onto the table with the bird. The dog sniffs the bird over and looks at the vet, lowers his ears and whines as it shakes its head.
The vet takes the dog away and comes back with a cat. Places the cat in front of the bird. The cat sniffs the bird up and down, looks at the vet, gives a short meow and shakes its head,hops off the table and runs out the back.
"See!" the vet says to the woman. "Your parrot is dead."
The woman begins crying as reality dawns on her.
The vet writes out the bill and gives it to the woman who quickly looks at it.
"$1500 dollars, but you didn't do any thing"
The vet just looks at her and says "If you had taken my word for it, it would only cost $20 bucks, but with the lab report and cat scan..."
Doug Bills is founder of AI Environments - a company developing environments having Artificial Intelligence.