Cockatoo

Carla and I just returned from a trip to North Carolina. We stayed in a hotel that had a large bird cage in the lobby. The door to the cage was permanently removed, allowing a large white cockatoo to climb around the outside of the cage and interact with guests. A large, hand painted sign read "Hi! I'm 'Sabrina.' I love people but I do bite." A small sign on the bottom of the cage read "Handle bird at own risk."

When Carla approached the front desk to ask for a map, Sabrina croaked out, "Hello! Pretty Bird!" And lifted up one of her legs towards Carla, hopeful to climb on. Carla asked the clerk, "Does she bite hard?" The clerk, a young woman, gave a response that was rather frightening.

"Yeah," she nonchalantly affirmed, both completely accepting of the answer and bored with it. "Pretty hard. Or sometime she gets on your arm and won't get off. And if you have a mole on your arm she'll rip it off."

Let's reread that last sentence together. Horrifying, right?

Shouldn't the sign say, "If your eyes are brown, Sabrina will think they're macadamia nuts and eat them," or something a bit more ghastly?