Our Greenwing Macaw and Diva Parrot Roxanne's American Idol Audition Tape

Our Greenwing macaw and Diva parrot Roxanne has developed a terrific singing voice over time. Like most, at the beginning she couldn't sing a note for the life of her, but she's developed a melodious voice. The difficulty has been recording it, because once the camera comes out she tends to clam up.

We've discovered that Roxanne tends to be particularly motivated to vocalize as well as sing when the laundry is running. So we've developed a trick of hiding the camera when we're doing laundry. Roxanne has two favorite songs: Roxanne by The Police, of course! She was named after that song. And You Are My Sunshine. We've had the good fortune of capturing snippets of both songs with our video recorder. We were particularly fortunate with You Are My Sunshine, because we caught Roxanne singing it to the dryer, which is noticably quieter than the washer. Mostly, Roxanne sings when the washing machine is running.

So, we're pleased to present Roxanne's American Idol audition tape, featuring a duet with the late great Gene Autry:

We think it's particularly fortunate to pair Roxanne with Gene Autry because we were interested to discover that it was Gene Autry who popularized the old Jimmie Davis tune in 1940! Additionally, Gene Autry is one of our all time favorite singers, and we have fond memories of watching Gene Autry, along with Roy Rogers, on the old Autry/Rogers Ranch show following school every day way back when!