NEWS
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* 1/22/2021 Jim Lewis, continued:
I would wait about a half hour, when it became dark, and then with a flashlight and wide-mouth bowl, catch moths that were attracted to the stale beer and molasses concoction. Some were sphinxes, hard to catch as they never landed on the bark of the trees but hovered as described in the article. [Sphinx moth].
Several different species of sphinx regularly frequented my mother`s flower garden around dusk, also quite difficult to catch. A high percentage were tomato sphinx, as all the tomato plants in the neighborhood nourished it’s larva.
Reading the sphinx article has brought back fond memories of my early days in Glen Ellyn. I still have several frames of butterflies and moths I collected back then.

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Jim's parrot, expanded:

Story of Winfield. Here’s my pet story, which includes a self-inflicted asterisk.     In 1985, I was struggling to figure out what to get my son, Tommy, as a 10th birthday present. Nearing a desperation point just before his birthday, I learned that one of my fellow employees had a young African Gray parrot for sale-$400, cage included. While this was much more than I had planned on spending, out of ideas, and the deadline nearing, I decided to buy it, sight unseen.
It was a sensational hit with my son when I brought it home…but my wife was more than miffed…”who’s going to clean the cage, where is the cage going, what about feeding it…and why didn’t you tell me in advance”…you’ve seen this movie before!
And we had to give the bird a name. Tom loved the Yankees, and his favorite player was David Winfield, so that became its name. And where to put Winfield? In our kitchen there was a small little cove which had a sink, kitchen knives set, cookie jar, phone book (something now nearly extinct ) and the phone nearby. African Grays are nearly a foot long, have beautiful red tail feathers, live around 50+years, and are uniquely capable of mimicking words and sounds.
Wanting the bird to begin to learn some words, before running to catch a train in the morning I would speak into a tape recorder a word or short phrase repeatedly for about 10 minutes, place it next to Winfield’s cage, and then switch it on before I left the house. Tommy would do the same in the morning when he woke up and came down to the kitchen for breakfast. “Good morning”, Pretty Bird“, and Hello” became some of Winfield’s favorite words quickly learned…. and many more over time.
Unintended consequence: Because the phone was so close to Winfield, every time the phone rang, right after the first ring, before anyone could answer the phone , he would loudly say “Hello”, as he realized when someone did answer the phone, they would always say “Hello”.
Oh, yes-the self inflicted asterisk is because the photo enclosed here is not actually Winfield, but one of his distant relatives.
African Grey - not Jim's:

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^ News back in 1930.