Most people who know me know I have a lot of rats, some know I have ferrets too but not many know I have other beasts too. A friend on Facebook asked if I would post a pic of my birds so I did, then it occurred to me to post them here too. Both of them are molting right now and are not looking their best. They both apologized. Gandalf (as in Gandalf the gray, I didn't name him that) talks all the time, rocks to music and has started waving his hand at me when he wants attention.

Enjoyed the backstory GMS; you must be either rich or broke with all the critters that you have to feed. lol

They are beautiful but African Greys scare hell out of me.

I assume you prefer the Norwegian Blues

impoverished.

Most large hookbills can take a finger off if they want to. African grays aren't usually mean, all parrots will try to see how far they can push you but once you establish who is the boss they do fine. What would scare me is a macaw, now those things have a monster beak on them. The only notoriously mean hookbills are cockatoos, they'll nail you down to the bone just for meanness. Once most parrots are bonded with a person they're fine, but most parrots only bond with one person and some breeds live over 100 years.

My phobia of African Greys comes from being with one that likes to nibble ears. I was too terrified to show it who was boss.

Ah, yes, mine likes to nibble my shirts. Parrots use their beaks as hands and a lot of people think a bird is biting them when all it's doing is hanging onto something, and they do need things to chew mainly because they're intelligent and get bored easily. I give mine wood blocks, baby toys and old credit/debit cards.
He has this nasty talent for opening both locks on his cage, getting out, destroying things, then looks at me and says "hello" when I walk into my office. On his last excursion he pulled most of the keys from my keboard, thus ruining it, and chewed up a bunch of cd jackets, most of which had the cd key on them. Now I've added a third lock. I also give him a lot of sunflower seeds, cracking them for him is like popping packing bubbles for us.