A remote control is hardly a proper toy for a bird, but for some reason, Harley loves them. He is drawn to any remote in the house, and as soon as he gets close to one, he screeches at it and eats the buttons. Oh, don't worry, he doesn't really eat the buttons, but he chews them off. Very quickly. In fact, I'm pretty sure — if given a choice — he'd go for the soft, squishy buttons on a remote control even before he climbed circles around an awkward set of small vertical dowels to get to half an almond wrapped in a piece of paper in the lower box of his Art Project. Well, the remote is often left out in plain sight on the Eating Couch by forgetful people (um, that would be me).

And, since Bruce is something of a gadget guy (to put it mildly), and this is the 21st Century, there are lots of remotes for Harley to choose from. From which Harley can choose. (Don't tell Bruce, but the XBOX controller, although shiny and very attractive to birds, seems impervious to Harley's Beak Of Biting. You know, so far.)

Best. Toys. Ever.

TV remotes have been gotten the most abuse. The old bedroom TV remote is now missing 3/4 of the volume down button, the right third of the number 7, the left third of the number 9, and the entire number 1. Here is Harley trying to climb from the bed to my nightstand, grab the remote in his beak, and gleefully remove all the buttons from its face.

(In case you were wondering, the loss of the remote buttons is not the reason we replaced the TV in the bedroom. But one of the selling points for the new TV is a second, mini remote that doesn't have soft, squishy buttons suitable for chewing off. Instead, its buttons are hard and can be pried off like the keys on a computer keyboard. We'll see how long it lasts.)

The cable remote has suffered the most losses, in part because it has more buttons to lose. Until Tuesday night, the affected buttons weren't ones we use. The SWAP button (recorded here in old camera mediocrity) was one of the first to go, but since it's in the "Picture-in-Picture" section, we don't miss it at all. There are two (of five) buttons now missing in that section; I have no idea what the other missing button said. The "On Demand" section also has a couple of losses: the right third of both the fast forward and the pause buttons. Again, not a problem since we don't use that section.

Tuesday's losses, however, were more serious. Now missing are 2/3 of the ALL ON button (was that what it said?), plus most of the small "on" buttons: AUX, TV, CABLE and SETUP. Only the small "on" POWER button is mostly intact. ("Mostly" counts.) The loss of these could pose some real problems, although so far I've been able to turn everything on and off. We'll see what Bruce says when he gets home tonight.

Do cable companies replace remote controls? Surely Harley isn't the only pet/child/destructive person that's picked off those wonderfully squishy buttons.