Somehow they always find my car:
"When birds in hand make for the bushes" by Nestor Ramos | Globe Staff October 20, 2014
When beloved pets go missing, we search through stress and sorrow, posting pictures on telephone poles and flooding lost-and-found websites.
But buried among the many stories of disappeared dogs and cat cold cases is a steady stream of pleas from people searching for animals that are far harder to track down: cockatiels. If you thought finding Mr. Whiskers was difficult, imagine if he could fly.
As the weather begins to grow too cold for these birds from the other side of the world, the quixotic efforts to find them are growing desperate. These searches play out publicly on yard signs and online, strange and sincere testaments to the powerful attachments people forge with animals whose minds are as mysterious as their brains are tiny.
“It was one of the worst moments I’ve ever had,” said Melissa Zilembo of the instant not long ago in which her beloved Felicia swooped over her shoulder and out the front door of her Merrimac home.
Maybe you could dredge the river for him.
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A cockatiel’s energy is a curious thing, and they make for imperfect pets. They screech and they bite and they gnaw the wallpaper.
Smart in ways that are difficult to discern and stupid in ways that are glaringly obvious, they are built, fundamentally, to fly away....
Further complicating matters, said Michael Sazhin, who has performed as the Parrot Wizard on the “Late Show with David Letterman” and “America’s Got Talent,” is the fact that birds raised in captivity have no particular idea of where they’re going once they’re outside.
The cockatiels like Felicia are akin to a toddler who runs blindly out the door and up the sidewalk, only to realize all the houses look alike....
Apparently they believe “animals are often put here to teach people lessons,” which conflicts with everything I was ever taught. I was told we were to have dominion over them and slaughter them for food.
So what's for lunch?
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