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Lost Parakeet: It's Complicated

Residents of a neighborhood near downtown Charlottesville are looking for the owners of a parakeet who arrived there this week, but getting the bird back to its home could prove difficult.

When 20-year-old Catie Claire saw a yellow and green parakeet on her porch, she was surprised. 

“Because obviously he’s not found in nature ," she explained. "I mean he would be, but not in Charlottesville, Virginia!”

The bird looked tired, and she resolved to try and find its owner – but then it flew away.  Claire thought that was the end of the story, but she was wrong.

“Today I was walking to my car, a family stopped me – a woman and two boys.  I think they might have been twins, and they asked me if I had lost a parakeet, and I was like, ‘No, I haven’t, but I actually saw it yesterday,’ and they were like, ‘Well we have it now, and we’re looking for the owners.”

So she asked her dad to get the word out.   He issued an all-points-bulletin -- emailing members of the neighborhood swimming pool, and Claire now waiting for the rightful owner to check in.  There’s just one problem.

“After they had left," Claire recalls, "I realized that I didn’t know how I would contact them, so I think that I would have to do what they did and kind of go door-to-door on Malcolm Crescent and see if I could find their house.”

So if you’re missing a parakeet, you can contact us (shausman@vt.edu), and we’ll contact her, and she’ll go looking for the people who have the bird and will bring it back to its owners, all courtesy of the Internet, broadcasting and some kind-hearted neighbors.  

Sandy Hausman is Radio IQ's Charlottesville Bureau Chief