The bird, which spent part of the afternoon flying around the city, was first spotted outside of Cici’s Pizza by the assistant store manager, Thomas Brogan.
“I’m a dog lover myself and when it comes to bird experience, I have none,” Brogran said.
Jumping over the counter, Brogran rushed outside at the sight of the big red and blue bird that was hopping near the restaurant’s doorway.
“It was standing right there at the door looking like it wanted to come in,” he said. “It was a very pretty bird.”
Around that time, Afton Meeter, inventory pricing manager at Petco, said a customer walked into the store to tell them about the bird.
“He came in and asked if we were missing a big red bird,” Meeter said. “We thought at first he had seen a wild bird, like a cardinal or something. To walk out and see it was a parrot was pretty shocking. It was a big bird.”
Meeter and another Petco employee left the store to help capture the bird along with Taylor Wood, a companion animal manager at Petco. They all assumed the parrot belonged to Pets-N-Pals down the road as wild parrot sightings are not common in Staunton, Meeter said.
Frightened and trying to flee the ensuing commotion, the bird flew into a window at Staples.
“It hit the window pretty hard trying to get away,” Meeter said.
She said she, and the other Petco employee, ran back to the store to get gloves, a net, and box, but Wood was able to coax the bird onto a stick before her coworkers returned.
Wood, who was unavailable to talk about the bird's capture, carried the bird into the store’s office so it would not be stressed out and then started calling around to see who the bird belonged to, Meeter said.
The bird, however, did not belong to Pets-N-Pals which is known to carry a variety of parrots.
“It doesn’t belong to us,” said Emily Buchanan, general manager for Pets-N-Pals. “Someone did call us a little while ago about trying to catch a bird in a tree, but it isn’t ours.”
Wood called animal control in Staunton to see if they had a report of a missing bird.
Staunton Animal Control Officer Lesley Holsinger said this is the first time she has ever gotten a call for a loose parrot.
“We’ve had a couple of snakes and there was one call, it wasn’t mine and it was several years ago, but they found a crocodile in someone’s house,” she said. “We don’t get a lot of bird calls.”
Shortly after Holsinger’s arrival at Petco, someone called the police department to report their parrot was missing.
“I’m not sure how it got loose or how long it had been loose,” Holsinger said. “We just transported it.”
She said the bird was awake and appeared to be fine when it was returned to the owner, but the owners told Holsinger they were taking it to the vet to be checked out.
Brogan said he learned something valuable from the experience, in the event he ever has to catch another loose parrot. The lesson, he said, is similar to President Theodore Roosevelt's foreign policy which is to "speak softly, and carry a big stick."
“Walk softly and carry a little, tiny stick,” Brogan said with a laugh.
(Staunton News Leader - May 13, 2016)
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