I Bet You Don’t Know These Things About ‘Odidere’, The Mysterious Iwo Iconic Bird

Photo credit: www.telegraph.co.uk

If you have been a patriotic citizen of Iwo, the name ‘Odidere’ to you would be like slang, The bird is well connected to the history of how this city was founded and since the creation of Iwo, the bird has been the symbol and icon of Iwo land. Team Iwocitygist were so lucky to witness how some elderly people were talking to a parrot right inside the palace of the Oluwo and we wasted no time to ask them about the famous bird.

We were firstly asked of the knowledge about the connection and the city and our positive response triggered them to tell us about the bird and I deemed it fit to put it up on this site for more knowledge to our people home and diaspora. If you don’t know about the connection of Iwo and Odidere bird, you can go through it HERE.

According to the elderly man who claimed to be AbdulRaheem Matego, the bird is not just ordinary as it seems but have so many spiritual features that is strange but true and we shall be going through it in no particular order.

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PHYSICAL FEATURES:

- Odidere is the iconic symbol of Iwo city because of its significance in creation of the city, It is very impossible to talk about the creation of Iwo without mentioning the bird. Read about it HERE

- Odidere  speaks fluently like humans, more like someone whistling to talk, speaks fluently that someone would understand its words, The bird has the ability to record and master anything said in its presence and then say it out when its owner comes around

- The bird stays only on the apex of tall trees, but due to deforestation and modernization of the city, tall trees become scarce thereby making the bird scarce to be seen in the city of Iwo and this led to the compulsory presence of the bird at the palace of Oluwo of Iwo to serve as a symbol.

- Even though the bird speaks a lot, only the truth of the matter would be heard from its mouth, in the olden days, the bird would report any indecent activities that happened while the owner was away especially about women of wayward actions. This led to natural hatred of Odidere by women and this has a matter of fact gave the bird an alias in the yoruba race 'AYEKOOTO' which simply means 'People detest the truth'.

- There is a Odidere bird in at least a house in every yoruba land because of its ability to speak even though some do not know any other features of the bird.

- The feather-tail of the bird usually red and short is one of the most expensive things the owner can sell for a lot of money likewise the excrement of the bird.

SPIRITUAL FEATURES 

The egg of the bird is disastrous to human sight. it can not be seen with naked eyes, Seeing the eggs makes the eyes go blind without any provided remedy to gain the sight again. The female Odidere lays egg in the deepest part of a hole in a tree

- Odidere can never touch the ground with its bare foot, any Odidere that touches the ground with its legs will be unable to fly in the air anymore for the rest of its existence,

- The palm frond can not touch this eggs as it will explode. It is a way to detect the eggs inside a tree in the olden days, the hunters would insert the frond in the hole of a tree, and when it explodes and the flame comes up, they know Odidere's egg is in the tree, and whenever they want to take charge of the hatched ones, all what they used to do is to tie bean cake (Akara Kengbe) with the frond and put it into the hole of the tree where the bird laid it's eggs. The bean cake is what would attract the chicks to trace the frond up, Once they are out, they would put them on the ground so they would not be able to fly in their existence.

- It is reported that the egg is what the crown contains that made it a ntaboo for any king to look into the crown in the golden days.

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N:B: This spiritual features does not in any way related to the foreign parrots, because if we take a clear look at the indigenous odidere and the foreign parrots, one would see the clear difference between the two. So the features above is nothing but real.

References:
Alh. AbdulRasheed Matego
Mr Adisa Kabir (CS)