Lost parrot crashed family’s party before reuniting with his owner

Lost parrot reunited with owner after talking to guests at family party - The Washington Post

On Easter Sunday, Angela Sibbrell was celebrating with family in her parents’ yard in Cape Coral, Fla., when she looked over her brother’s shoulder and saw a shamrock-green bird.

“We were like, wait a minute, what?” Sibbrell told The Washington Post.

She and her family quickly realized the parrot might be someone’s pet. Her sister, a veterinarian who was in town for the holiday, took the bird into the bathroom beside their pool. Sibbrell posted photos on Facebook and soon got in touch with the owner, Brent Chadwell, who had been spreading the word about his beloved missing bird, Tiki, for three days. Sibbrell was able to reunite the bird with his owner that same night.

“It restored my faith in humanity a little bit that they were so nice,” Chadwell, 34, told The Post. “And that everybody, it was like the whole northwest Cape, pitched in to help me.”

Chadwell had wanted a parrot for a decade before he finally got Tiki. His family had an African gray parrot while he was in high school before he joined the military. He had a dog but always wanted another parrot.

Finally in 2018, after buying his own place, he got Tiki, an eclectus parrot from the Solomon Islands, near Australia.

But on April 6, his partner called to tell him that Tiki, who’s now 5, was missing.

She’d been cleaning the house with the door open, thinking the parrot’s cage door was closed. But it wasn’t, and Tiki had flown out of the house.

Chadwell, knowing the odds were likely not in his favor, posted about Tiki in various Facebook groups and moved his cage outside. He put Tiki’s food container inside, hoping it would lure the parrot back home.

He also called a nearby rescue center, Parrot Outreach Society in Punta Gorda, in case somebody found Tiki and brought him there.

Chadwell spent the next few days asking people in the area to keep an eye out for the vibrant parrot. During his walks around Cape Coral, Chadwell yelled Tiki’s name to signal that his family was out looking for him.

Each time Chadwell returned home, he was reminded of his missing companion.

“It hurt my heart to walk into the living room and see that big, empty space,” he said.

On Easter Sunday, Chadwell again spent the day looking for Tiki before taking a break for dinner. He was about to head back out to search around 7 p.m. when he checked his Facebook messages to see if anyone had reported spotting Tiki.

For the first time, there was a promising lead.

“I found your bird!!” the message from Sibbrell read, beside a phone number.

Chadwell replied, asking if she had the parrot, and Sibbrell responded with two photos of the orange-beaked bird sitting in the pool bathroom, writing “I think so!”

Upon seeing the photos, Chadwell wrote back: “omg!!!!!”

He then called Sibbrell, who told him about the parrot saying “Peekaboo!”

Immediately, Chadwell knew it was Tiki. “Peekaboo” is one of the bird’s regular greetings.

“This is the best day of my life,” Chadwell told Sibbrell.

He grabbed a cat carrier and made the 15-minute drive to Sibbrell’s home. While Sibbrell and her family waited, they watched Tiki through a screen door as the parrot danced to songs they queued up on their phones. They “fell in love” with him, Sibbrell said.

When Chadwell arrived and loaded Tiki into the carrier, Sibbrell’s family cheered.

It felt good, Sibbrell said, “to know that we got him back to the home that he loves.”

During his first few days back home, Tiki was squawking more than normal and talking less — behavior Chadwell called a “little streak of wild bird” left over from his time away.

But he’s since calmed down, returning to his usual lines: “Hello,” “Come here” and, of course, “Peekaboo.”