THEY were a lovely couple.

She was trim and beautifully attired in colours that matched her personality; bright and cheerful, bold but not arrogant.

He was always the gentleman, attending to her every need.

He was a chirpy kind of chap, energetic and impulsive. Together, they made you stop and gawp; there was hardly a more handsome pair. If they had been human and not lovebirds, they would probably have modelled on the catwalk in Milan or Barcelona, rather than being stuck, side by side on an artificial perch in a cage all day.

They still, nevertheless, looked the part and never seemed to tire of each other’s company; lovebirds by name and lovebirds by nature.

So I wasn’t at all afraid when I grasped one gently to remove it from its cage to clip its nails. How could anything that looked so utterly delightful possibly cause me any harm? How wrong I was.

Now I’m not daft. I treat patients such as parrots with considerable respect, being fully aware that that beak of theirs is capable of crushing the toughest of nuts. And my fingers aren’t as tough as nuts. And my fingers have nerve endings, which, to the best of my knowledge, nuts tend not to have. And my fingers seem to bleed readily when punctured or torn, which nuts definitely don’t.

Nor am I foolhardy. Ferrets, for example, no matter what their owners say, tend not to like me. Yes, I know they have never bitten before. Yes, I know they are sweetness and light when held by their owner or even the owner‘s children. Yes, I know they are fine as long as you handle them properly. But then I must smell of cats and rabbits and other things that ferrets view with a certain animosity.

It’s just that once bitten, twice shy or, in my case, five times bitten, six times shy. And, when ferrets sink their teeth into you on a Monday morning, they tend not to let go until about Tuesday evening, no matter how loudly you scream or how quickly the tears run down your cheeks.

Unless, of course, you are naïve enough to think you can prise them off, in which case they hang onto your flesh until the following Thursday or Friday. Or at least that’s how it feels.

So ferrets also get treated with kid gloves. Except these kid gloves should be made of chain mail so as to make me completely at ease.

But lovebirds? I ask you! How could anything so benign cause you any harm? It’s easy, actually.

What this one did was to get the top of its beak down the back of my thumb nail and the bottom of its beak on the nail. Then it bit down. Hard.

I lost a couple of nails once, years ago, when I dropped a brick on my fingers. My digits swelled and went black and the nails shed after a couple of weeks. My thumbnail, however, succumbed in a matter of seconds and all the pain of the two week affair was packed into that short time.

Sorry, remind me why they are called lovebirds.