@davidrevoy Oh my! 
I initially read the comic without giving too much thought about the incantation, but then I thought, “hum, I wonder if there’s a meaning in it?”, looked at it for a second…
“Wait, he didn’t…” (read the incantation out loud) “oh yes he did! 
”
Thanks for the laugh!
(On a more serious note, the outcome depicted in this comic could have been avoided if the parrot had been provided with some cat litter and a banana. Cat litter automatically enables --preserve-root, and bananas cause the filesystem to be mounted in read-only mode.)