Some Observations from the Hill
by H. H "Hub" Brown 

Dogs have a sense of gratitude, cats take things you do for them as a regular chore, but when it comes to parrots I don't think they have any room for it in those tiny heads of theirs. 

 The last time John was home he was fooling with the parrot and broke the sharp tip of his bill off. Monica had warned Tom about a parrot bleeding. She said the bird is so small, about the size of a pigeon, they don't contain much blood so it can be fatal.

 They wrapped the bird up and took him to the vet's up in Vestal. Tom was scared and probably drove faster than he should to get him to the vet who cauterized his bill to stop the bleeding. They left him there and John went back in the afternoon, paid the bill, and brought him home. 

 When Tom is home he brings the parrot out and sets him on the back of a chair and he helps me eat breakfast. I would offer him a piece of corn flake or an oats and he would take it in the side of his mouth and seemed to prefer cereal that had been in the milk. So I assumed that he wouldn't bite anymore. He seemed so grateful when I gave him something to eat. So when I was ready to leave the table I stuck my finger out and he climbed on it and rode back to his cage. 

 When I got him to his cage he put one foot on top of the door and then he seemed to change his mind for all at once he grabbed my knuckle, took a piece of skin off about 3/4 inch long by 1/2 inch wide, punched a claw in each side of the patch of skin and cut me a little inside my thumb. Now I have a very touchy hand and I leave him strictly on his own.

 Some time I'll sleep til 12:30 or 2:00 and then I'll wake up and can't go back to sleep. Then my memory will take me back to when I was a real small child. 
 The banker who owned the farm where we lived and Dad worked must have been a nut about horses. There was an old team of mares that Dad didn't even put in a pasture. They wandered at will around the house and barn. Bob used to get something to stand on and climb up on old Pet's back. She would act unconcerned but would gradually work her way to an apple tree that had a limb that was just the right height to walk under and scrape Bob off. 

 Once in a while the hired man would use her as a buggy horse. One evening I remember he had hitched her to the buggy and was going down to the hotel at a little settlement called La Grange. There was a railroad station by that name there and most of the natives called it by that name but the post office was name Oesterhout. Just before the hired man got to the hotel where he hoped there would be some young female guests, Old Pet, who had been on green grass all the time, had a sudden urge to get rid of some gas and the hired man's white pants suddenly took on a greenish hue. This shortened his evening's plans for he turned right around and returned to the farm. 

 Besides these two old retirees, there was a team of draft horses, a team of light horses called road horses and Dad had a light horse of his own, and then there was a big colt, Ginger.  And I must not forget Hugo the Shetland pony who was so small that when Dad stood over him and spread his feet apart, Hugo could walk right out from under him.