The bird in a cage as "pet", perfectly symbolizes the repulsive characteristics of "Domestication". Some bird owners will say that even though they leave the cage door open, all day, for the bird....the bird chooses to stay in the cage! When I used to have birds, as a kid, I don't think we ever let them out of the cage more than a handful of times, throughout their lives, and I imagine that's a normal number for bird owners, cuz you don't want the bird to be shitting all over the house, right?
What you want is for the bird to sit there and look pretty, while forgetting that the beautiful creature is a product of forced sex by the "bird lover" "breeder", "hand-raised" in order to continue stripping away the natural inclinations of the bird til the bird becomes some kind of retarded empty shell of a creature, now dependent on human "companionship" for it's "health" and "happiness".
There is something really disgusting about the process. This kind of "Domestication" truly exposes a very repulsive characteristic of the human being. To strip away the dignity of the creature to the point where it wants to become a "companion" to the very thing that caged it...is an interesting thing to consider.
The domestication process reminds me of all the humans who are essentially "domesticated" to the government, and yet hold favorable feelings towards the government and the nation, and religion, and politics, and all sorts of other shit........ regardless of the suppression of natural human inclinations that the citizen is subjected to.
Isn't that what you call "ironic" ...or is there a better word to define this sort of joke?