Did I report earlier about John and Vicki coming home this evening with
oxygen for John?  Well, they are home and John is using oxygen.  The time
change has me all screwed up.  I don't know when Chester will get up in the
morning.  I'm thinking an hour earlier.  He sort of tracks with the sun when
it comes up.  Lately, for the last month or so, he wakes up, after taking a
nap late in the evening, and while I'm trying to watch TV after say 11
o'clock, he whistles and talks and tries to keep me engaged communicating
with him.  I even miss some of the dialogue he makes so much noise at times.
Once we go to bed, though, he stops.  Speaking of Chester, tonight I stuck
my fingers through the bars of his cage.  We have this game we play.  I
stick my fingers in his cage and start saying, "Chester?  Where are you."
If he is on his perch, he quietly moves over and sneaks up on me and grabs
my finger and as soon as his beak is lightly clamped on to one of my
fingers, he makes this loud noise.  Oh, what would you call it?  It is like
a loud sudden double hand clap one right after the other.  He does this
noise during church sometimes, too.  Anyhow, he thinks this game is funny.
If he is hanging from the bars, he makes more noise coming to me but he
thinks he is still being quiet, and he comes over and grabs my finger and
makes that same loud noise just twice.  Like he is thinking, "I got you."  I
honestly think this bird knows I'm blind but I can touch his tail now or
lift his wings up and he won't try and bite
me real hard.  Boy, a couple of years ago, he'd rip skin off if I did that
to him.  Tonight, I poked my fingers in to his cage to play the, where is
Chester game, and when he grabbed me, he lifted his foot, as he so often
does, and grabbed one of my fingers.  Then, using his beak, he grabs one of
the upper bars to his cage, and pulls himself up on to my fingers poking
inside his cage.  He normally then places the other foot on a bar and with
the first foot on my finger, he bends over and starts nibbling around on my
various fingers.  When his toenails get longer, they get sharper.  They are
getting sharper.  Donna and Everett have gotten so they can hold him and
trim his nails so it is about time again, I guess.  Anyhow, sometimes he
takes his foot off the bars and stands up on two of my fingers and he bends
over to bite me.  Tonight, he was holding on really tight to my middle
finger with his left foot and his right foot was on my index finger.  I kept
trying to get him to move his left foot because it was poking into the skin
of my finger.  So, I use my other hand to poke through the bars because he
is distracted and won't bite as hard.  He lost his balance when he remove
the foot on my index finger and slid up side down on my middle finger;
scraping skin all the way around.  Man, did it hurt because he tightened up
his grip on my finger up even more.  I was yelling and he got his foot back
on to my index finger and pulled himself up until he could clamp his beak on
to a bar again.  That hurt even more.  It took me another few seconds to get
him to put his feet back on the bars and to let go of my fingers.  No, it
didn't bleed but it sure hurt.

Phil.