Lost and Found, A scooter story
A Scooter Story
The Amazon that you see pictured on all my pages is my Yellow Fronted named Scooter. I got his name from a story I had read about an Amazon who had escaped from his owner and was returned to his owner after three days of being gone. I never knew how this choice of names would come back to haunt me. Scooter is a true "companion" bird to me and my familly. I work strange hours and have opposite off days from my girlfriend. On the good side, someone is always here to care for my children and our animals, on the downside, one of us are more or less alone at home. Scooter provides that stimulation that is missing when your significant other is not around. We have moved into a nice new house and Scooter was treated to nice, big, new cage. I located it in the familly room in front of a big window, which also opens up to the kitchen area. Unfortunatly it was also fairly close to the back door. I have cautioned my kids not to hang with the door open, or run in and out. I would watch for them to come in and out so I could keep Scooter in his cage while the door was open. On Sunday, May28 though, the worst finally happened. The kids had gone outside to play. I took Scooter out of the cage and decided to play with him for a while since the kids were outside. Usually they will stay outside for a couple of hours so I wasn't worried. The ice cream man came down the street though, and the kids came bursting into the house yelling about it. Before I could react, Scooter was off my shoulder and out the door. At very first I wasn't overly concerned. A trip to the refridgerator and back was usually enough to wind Scooter, so, I figured he couldn't fly very far. Boy was I wrong! He looked like a real champ flying along the edge of the woods the house backs up to. He flew about three hundred yards in a matter of seconds and cut left back into the woods. I ran after him and went to the spot I last saw him and took a look around. He could have been sitting right on top of me though and I never would have seen him in all the leaves as he is solid green. I ran back to the house, instructed the kids to get me a pillow case(after a venting to them about the door) and called my girlfriend at work to break the news of what had happened. The kids and I went back into the woods and called for scooter. I figured he would start squalking and give his location away. My girlfriend left work to come home and join the search. We searched untill it was to dark to do so anymore with no sign of Scooter. After dark, I sat on the back porch till the wee hours hoping to hear him without the distraction of the other birds that chirp during daylight hours. Nothing. And to make matters worse, a fox crossed my back yard that evening. I know that scooter does not have the instinct to be afraid of other animals. I posted Scooter on the Bird Hot Line which is an internet, worldwide, bird lost and found. I looked up my local paper on the internet and posted a missing add in the paper. I then made up some "LOST" posters on the computer and went to bed. I was off that Monday and Tuesday, and so I continued my search in the woods behind the house to no avail. Since Monday was Memorial Day, most buisinesses were closed, and so, there were only so many places we could put up our signs that I had made. I put them up in an apartment complex behind my subdivision, at the exit to my neighborhood, in the local supermarket, and the feeders supply store. The rest would have to wait untill Tuesday along with the add in the paper. My girlfriend, who works nights, could not sleep with Scooter missing and was going day and night. The adrenaline finally wore off and the realazation that Scooter was more than likely gone for good was starting to set in. I can't tell you how depressing it is to look at that big white cage and him not be there. To go to bed and not go through the little ritual of putting scooter to bed and watch him climb on the cage bars trying to get a last look before you cover the cage. And to have him not be there when you come down stairs in the morning, and him not there stretching and flapping his wings in morning greetings. Everyone in the house was in a foul mood, mostly not talking, and just looking out the windows trying to catch a glimps of him. His old cage had been moved outside with food and water in hopes of him seeing it and coming back, but, day after day it just sat empty on the back porch like a monument to what bad bird owners we were. On Tuesday, the buissinesses finally reopened, and we got back to hitting all the local pet stores, vet's offices, and places that were closed on Monday. I called the zoo, the Humane Society, and local animal control to tell them if anyone found a Parrot that it was mine. I don't even know how many car crashes we nearly caused from driving aroung looking at the sky instead of the road. Tuesday night we were up late again, and were being lazy and sleeping in Wenesday Morning when the phone rang. I let the answering machine get it. I heard a womans voice telling me that she thought my parrot was sitting on top of her husbands truck where he was working at a house in a subdivision about two miles from my house. We sprang from the bed hearts racing, and I grabbed the phone before she hung up. I got the details, grabed my son out of bed, threw him and a cage in the Jeep and off we went. When the man noticed Scooter sitting on the hood of his truck he appraoched him and he flew into a tree in the yard. Luckily he had the pressence of mind to call his wife at home to ask her to look in the paper to see if anyone had reported one missing. The man managed to coax him down with a french fry and kept him from leaving before we could get there. When we arrived Scooter seemed disoriented, and didn't seem to know who we were. He backed away from my girlfriend, so we took one of the food bowls from his cage and set it by him. He jumped onto the food bowl, when he did my girlfriend made a grab for him and got him. We put him in the cage loaded him up and took him home. The first thing he did was to fly over to a plate of macaroni and cheese that was still sitting out on the table, and proceeded to eat about half the plate full. He went to his cage and drank two full crocks of water, ate out of every food cup he had, and took a long nap. I had posted a reward for his return, so I drove to the bank, got out some money, and went back to the house where he was found. I gave the man his reward, and I think we both came away feeling like we had won the lottery. Little did I know that the chances of me seeing my bird again WERE about the same as winning the lottery. A trip to Vet was in order to get a check up. Along with a WING CLIPPING! Things are starting to return to normal around here now, and Scooter (and the rest of us) are back to ouselves again. I cannot stress enough now how much I belive in wing clipping. The notion that wing clipping denies a bird his natural urge to fly is invalid because a captive bird has allready been denied all other things ordinary to a wild bird. It was an extraordinarily lucky chain of events that reunited us all, and I would not want anyone to face what we have all been through over here. So keep those wings clipped! To learn more about loss prevention, and what to do if you do loose your bird use the link to the Bird Hotline.
 
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