The Nation's Eye

The Nation's Eye was a trashy tabloid periodical. Ptolemy III, a literate macaw, read The Nation's Eye when he was living with Cindy Ledbetter's family in Cicero, Illinois. He disdained it; while he knew on some level the magazine published lies, he was also worried that some of what he read was true. He was starved for reading material, and so read it anyway.

The Nation's Eye ran several outrageous stories, including a piece about a four-armed toddler, various aliens contacts with humans, and stories about dead celebrities. He hated the alien stories the most.

After he'd been with the Ledbetters for three months, Cindy's friend Kathy Plotkin agreed to watch Ptolemy for a few days. Unfortunately, on the very first night, Kathy was experimenting with a new facial mask. When she went to tend to Ptolemy first thing in the morning, he didn't understand it was Kathy, instead believing it was one of the aliens he'd read about in The Nation's Eye. Panicked that his worldview had been completely wrong, Ptolemy promptly died.