Last night, the parrot bit a friend of mine, pretty badly. I had just brought her in, and put her on her perch. It was fairly chaotic, with new person, cats, dog wandering around making noise. My friend said hello and offered up her hand (as I was thinking/saying “That’s pretty brave of you, you might want to be careful…”) and Pasquale stepped up, then walked up her arm to her shoulder. Unfortunately my friend tried to get the bird to step back on her hand, and as I could have predicted based on experience, the parrot bit down on her thumb.
When this happens to me, I scream and usually drop the bird somehow; she was shocked and kept quiet and the bird held on. Eventually Pasquale gave up and I picked her up and moved her back to the perch.
No stitches, just a fair amount of bleeding and I’m sure some pain for several days.
tl;dr Guests: don’t pick up the bird. Hosts: remind guests not to pick up the bird.