Polly Is Missing

Polywaffle, or Polly for short, is one of our two pet Indian Ringnecks. Polly is the green one and Hershey is the blue one.  

Polly and Hershey live in a luxury apartment in our outdoor entertainment area.  Polly was hand reared and enjoys human contact.  Hershey was given to us by her teenage former owner and it did not take long to see why.  She is quite aggressive!  I nicknamed her, "Nippy".

Anyhow, the two birds, one male and one female were getting along fine and we had high hopes of breeding them.  Then a couple of days ago I noticed that they had chewed right through their top perch.  When I opened the door, Polly flew out.

Immediately, the dogs went for him.  Polly managed to dodge them without leaving the ground; nevertheless, it gave him a fright and he then flew up into a tree in the backyard.  Polly is easily handled and with a little coaxing will hop onto my shoulder.  But this time he would not budge.  Not long after, he flew into a neighbour's tree and spent the night there.  The following morning he decided to stretch his wings again and flew off, circuiting the street.  Being green and well camouflaged it was impossible to see him in the tall trees.

My daughter who is his official owner, though certainly not his carer, took time off work to run off hundreds of flyers and distribute them around the neighbourhood.  I must say, I did not hold out much hope.  A Little Eagle had flown into our backyard and was perched on the fence.  I thought Polly would be an easy target.

Then yesterday afternoon I received a call to say that the vet had Polly!  He had landed on someone's front lawn and hopped onto their arm.  They brought him in.  I could hardly wait to drive from work to the vet to pick him up.

The vet brought out the little cage and I looked happily at the pretty green parrot inside it.  It was not Polly!  Found in our neighbourhood, and remarkably similar to Polly, but not Polly.  How coincidental is that?

So Polly is still missing and spent last night enduring a thunderstorm out in the "wild".

In the meantime, some funny things have happened.  Some blackbirds have been walking up the path to see Hershey and pick up any crumbs she drops from her cage.  They could fly straight into the entertainment area, but instead, they fly to the edge of the path and walk up it!    We also  put up a spare cage in the backyard in case Polly felt like returning.  He didn't, but some pigeons were inside it when we looked!  The grass always seems greener on the other side of the fence, it seems.