Finnegan: The two items we had the were rather unique was the parrot, I forget what we called the parrot, and the other one was Bogey they little white terrier dog we picked up. The parrot came first. My memory fails me on where we picked that parrot up. But it was before Okinawa. And the Chief he picked up this parrot. In those days we were just doing screening duty for the fleet and it wasn't very interesting because you didn't have the contacts and the fighting all the time, you're just looking for submarines and never finding any. And during those times the Chief set about the task of teaching the parrot to talk. And the parrot just didn't catch on. And the Chief had a 1st Class mate. My god he must have been about 6 foot 2 and he was solid muscle. But he was the chief's right hand man the two of them went together all the time. And they used to sit there up by the folks. And be sitting there as the ship would be steaming through the water up there. On nice day they would be sitting there with the Chief with this parrot on his shoulder. And he's looking over at the parrot and he sitting there with his face about 2 inches from the parrot. And the parrots looking right at him and he's looking right at the parrot about 2 inches away and he's saying HELLO PARROT [slowly]. And of course the parrot would just start at him, ya know? And this would go on for hours. And it was really was a funny, it was a funny performance. To see this fella tryin', this rough, tough, Chief Bozen mate trying to teach the parrot. But no one laughed. Because even though it was funny. We would laugh up in the bridge. But anyone down around with them. Any of the deck hands that laughed had to face the fury of this Bosun's Mate helping with the Chief, you know? Then he would just take them right off the deck and toss them off. Everybody respected the Chief's efforts to teach this parrot to talk. It became part of the ship's lore. When was the parrot going to talk? They were in fact, as I recall, placing bets on it and things. You had nothing to do at sea and you figure you'd have pools when the parrot, what day the parrot would talk, what hour the parrot would talk. Well as we were underway there came a time whenever the occasion arose for planes, a tow plane, a sleve plane, to be able to be in the area. They always sent it out to give us anti-aircraft practice. I remember the one time, the first time the parrot was aboard. The screening plane came along, of course the plane streamed its sleeve. And there is nothing worse, more violent than the clap of a 5 inch gun. It just, it rocks you, unless you got used to it. I never got used to it. It's a tremendous clap. It just hurts, it hurts your ears to hear it. Of course the parrot had never heard anything on the island it had been on. It's sitting there on the Chief's shoulder. Of course in these sleeve exercises the crew, the deck crew, used to just sit around and razz the Gunnery force. Because it was all 5 inch mounts. Sure enough the sleeve came up the side and he's waiting. And word came over the speaker, "Stand By, coming on the range, coming on the range, commence firing" Of course then we waited for the first clap. That was always the worst one because after they started firing you became used to it. Of course the parrot is sitting there blinking lazily on the Chief's shoulder when the first 5 inch went off. And the whole ship jumped and the parrot of course wasn't even about to stay close to anything like that. Never heard it before. Off he went flying over the ocean, like mad. Not only was he flying like mad directly away from the ship into nowhere, but while he was flying he was screaming. Ywaking away as he went flying from the ship. Of course the Chief is just completely upset and he's just screaming at the parrot to come back, ya know, and behind him this big Bozen mate, this big brute is just beating him on the back saying "ayyy it's talking, it's talking, it's talking!" So the last we saw of the parrot as it grew dimmer and dimmer on the horizon but you could still hear it screaming away and the fella was just delighted because the parrot had finally talked. The other mascot we had was longer term and we called him bogey. And he was a little white terrier. I have a picture of him here that I'll get to you. As I recall we picked him after we were down being repaired and got the fox's mast on down there. We spent some time being repaired it was a period of a couple of weeks if more. Of course all during that time the idea is relax the crew and send them to shore and just give it as good of a time as you could. During that time the picked up Bogey. Bogey was a little white terrier, God knows where he came from.God knows what pedigree he was. But he was about 4-5 inches tall and really a cute little dog. And bogey became a real pal of everyone aboard the ship. They's be just delighted with him. But Bogey had a problem, because his feet were so small, his legs were so short that he couldn't climb any of the steel ladders. So unless someone carried him up and down he was always on the main deck. They had a place for him to sleep there and everything else because while we were down there being repaid of course it was very quiet and everything else. So Bogey was living the life when we finally went back up to the Buckner Bay Incident. When we opened fire the night of the Buckner Bay Incident, that was the first time we had opened fire when Bogey was aboard. A somewhat similar thing happened to Bogey that happened to the parrot. After we got through with the damage and everything. We were just cleaning up, I remember everyone was concerned where was Bogey, because they couldn't find him. Everybody was running all over the main deck where he had been. And they were looking down. They were trying to figure out if he had been carried down into the fire room or whatever. And they couldn't find Bogey and he finally ended up, they found him up in the Captain's bridge. Way up on the main deck where the captain was, huddled down back aft there by the signal bags. Which means, I thought it was three ladders he would have had to climb, but I see now today that it was just two ladders. But they were long ladders. And that was the most remarkable thing after we had sort of relaxed. After that tragedy at Buckner Bay was the question went around of how in the world Bogey ever made those two ladders. But I got a feeling that once those guns started to go off, Bogey figured boy he just had to get out of there. And they only way he could see to go was up. He made the ladders. He made it all the way as high as he could go but there was just no place else to go.