The past few days have been hectic here with a little bit of aarrggghh! thrown in for good measure but last evening was just down-right sad.
Our oldest son and his wife had purchased a gorgeous Cockatiel a few weeks ago and he had become to them what a toy poodle pup my husband and I had owned years ago, was…their ‘baby’. Last evening while sitting outside, their baby flew the coop. Even though his wings were clipped, his flight feathers had grown back enough to allow him to at least attempt a getaway. It was a pretty successful attempt to say the least.
For the next several hours my husband and son scoured the neighborhood hoping to come across the little fellow tuckered out from all the exercise, hopefully sitting restfully on a lawn somewhere rather than in any one of the hundreds of huge trees that surrounds our area.
My husband is a real softy and he remembered how important our little toy poodle had been to us when we were first married, despite the fact that he didn’t quite get the little fellow’s name right, so he did several walk-abouts and a drive-by until it was too dark to see anything. Along the way he met several wonderful neighbors, all of whom promised that they’d watch for the little fellow. One kind lady who owns two such birds even got into her car and drove around trying to find the bird.
My daughter in law was crushed and my son, well, he wasn’t quite certain how to respond but he searched the neighborhood, carried the bird’s cage out to the back yard and did what he could to convey to his wife that maybe in the morning the little fellow would be right back in his cage where he belonged.
The nights are still chilly here and the temperature cools down quickly once the sun has set but there was a female Cockatiel that left its home a few days ago and we are hoping that perhaps if one is found, so too will the other one be.
It’s a rather helpless feeling when you don’t know where to begin looking for a little pet that you adore who has wandered away. I know that if it were my pet I’d want everyone who was anyone to do what they could to help locate him. With birds however, the task is made more difficult by the fact that in our area there are all kinds of birds…Cardinals, Morning Doves, Crows, Chickadees, Robins…even Sea Gulls. While trying to pin point the location of a Cockatiel, even one that is uniquely colored as this little fellow is, the task of recognizing the missing amongst all the rest, is pretty frustrating.
This morning, after several walks around the neighborhood, he was finally spotted! Unfortunately, he isn’t yet in a frame of mind that would clue him into the fact that the woman walking towards him is really his ‘mom’ so before my daughter-in-law could get close enough to catch him, he flew off yet again. At least we know that for now, he’s still in the area and as his cage is still outside filled with his favorite treats, there is still a chance that he will find his way back home again.
Our Jack Russel is a pretty astute little lady and she knows that something is up. She’s gone out to the back yard almost every time someone else has, sniffing and smelling and each time a bird has flown over head, she’s looked up almost as though she’s checking to see if she recognizes it as a family member.
We’re not certain yet how this will affect another purchase that these young people were going to make once they arrive back home from vacation in July as they were planning on purchasing a 2nd bird as a play mate for their first. I know that if it were me, I’d have a tendency to not want to replace him and I probably wouldn’t be able to bring myself to have another feathered fellow so soon afterwards. But still, miracles do happen and people and animals do find their way…hopefully, there will be a happy ending to this very soon.
The first thing that will happen will be a ‘grounding’ — a vet visit to have flight feathers clipped will be the the order of the day, just after a lot of scolding and loving goes on.
Wish us luck!
