Charli Toes

I've started a little routine with my brown-headed parrot Charli. When it's time for bed, I cover up three sides of her cage. She likes to hang upside in the dark corner of the cage and watch the procedure.

One night, who knows why, I gently touched one of her toes while she was hanging upside down and said, "One Charli toe!." Then I touched the next toe and said, "Two Charli toe!", and so on. When I got to "Eight Charli toe!" I said it in an excited voice and patted all of her toes clinging to the bars of the cage. Then I told her it was sleepy time (code words) and pulled down the fourth cover of her cage.

She doesn't like her feet touched, but she tolerated this well. So I did this the next night, and she seemed to like it. Or at least tolerate it -- as you would the ravings of a lunatic -- no harm, just wait till it's over.

Now, of course, it's a nightly ritual. When I forget and start to pull down the last cover, she'll chirp and look at me, upside down. So I have to go play Charli Toes with her. It's very sweet. A friend of mine saw me do it one night and she just laughed. She has parrots, so she understands how insane they make us.