Sunday Edition

Sponsored by Bean Cuisine, from L'Avian Plus (because by now it's nearly friggin' lunch time).

I see from Mom's counter thingy that two of you have already checked in today: I didn't have a post up in time for you because Mom has been hogging the laptop for hours. She says she had to work this morning, sorry and all that. Hmph. Apologies, aschmologies, I want my breakfast: Do you know she hasn't even fed us yet? She says she had an emergency at her job. Personally, I can't imagine what kind of "emergency" could take precedence over my breakfast, but there you go.

Anyway, here's what I wanted to tell you about this week. While she's fixing my breakfast, hint, hint.

I've been saying "Good bird!" for awhile, but these people are so slow sometimes. I just could not get them to understand me! Then they get all excited this week when they finally figure out that's what I'm saying, like they're the ones, not me, who have accomplished something.

So now they're competing to see who gets credit for teaching it to me. Dad claims he says "good bird" to me all the time, but that's not exactly true, because Mom constantly has to remind him to praise me when I do something he wants like Step Up. Mom says, "Pretty bird, Riley bird, pretty Riley bird!" because my first mom told her I liked to hear my name. But she doesn't usually say, "good bird" so she did not teach it to me either, at least not directly, anyway.

You want to know where I really heard it? Mom says it to Larry. I taught it to myself! So there.

You know I've told you before that Larry's wild, for all practical purposes. Mom tries to pet him every day, and sometimes he'll let her, but only on the belly so far. That poor dumb bird has never had a head skritch! Can you imagine? He has no idea what he's missing. Head skritches feel so good, especially when I'm molting. Mom's chair is right by my cage, and I used to come down and stand at the bottom near her so she could skritch my head, but lately I've been saving those for Dad. I'll let her pet my back but head-skritches are reserved for Dad.

As for belly skritches, I have mixed feelings about those. I'll let Mom give me one if I happen to be hanging on the front bars of my cage when she comes by, but I kind of freeze and give her the evil eye. I don't pin--like I said, mixed feelings--but I make sure she knows I'm just tolerating this and that she could get bitten at any time. Oops! I see I'm getting off on a bit of a tangent here. I should probably write a whole post on nothing but skritches some time.

Back to Larry. Mom tries to get him to step up on her finger, too, and sometimes he'll do it, although it's usually only with one foot, and only for a second. Whereupon she says, "Good bird!!" like he was just doing something too cool for school. Hmph. I've been stepping up for years. There's nothing to it. But he acts like he's stepping off a precipice, and she praises him to the skies. I repeat, hmph.

Riley,

Éminence grise of the Wood household