Of course, no one beats my Marcus! (Greenwing Macaw) ;o)
Shameless, I know... ;o)
Posted on 07/06/2005 6:39:19 AM PDT by GPBurdell
Tue Jul 5, 7:05 PM ET
A search is on for a Hungarian-speaking parakeet that escaped its owners' summer home last week. Peetuka is a 4-year-old blue parakeet, said owner Carol Mezofi, of Queens, N.Y.
"It was a hot day and we were sitting on the porch. My mom opened the door to go inside and he flew out," she said. "We tried to lure him back in and we stayed up all night but he didn't come back. We cried for a few days I don't think we'll find him now unless we get lucky."
Mezofi and her husband Laszlo said the small blue, white and gray bird, whose name is the Hungarian equivalent of "Steve," wasn't valuable, but was important to the family.
"It's been heartbreaking for us; he was like a member of our family," Laszlo Mezofi said.
Laszlo Mezofi said his 86-year-old mother-in-law, Anna Boehm, would sit and talk to the bird in her native tongue for hours. Boehm loved the bird a great deal, he said.
"She talks to him all day long, we can hear her downstairs teaching him Hungarian words and phrases," he said. "He's really not a bird to her or us. He's a little person and part of our family."
The Mezofis searched the area near their home in Jamaica and put up signs asking people to call if they saw the bird. So far, no one has called.
The family is offering a reward.
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Information from: Rutland Herald, http://www.rutlandherald.com/
FYI
I didn't think that parakeets could talk..
Your bird has a chance at a good life.
On a New York vacation in June, we set huddled against an unusually cold wind, in a park on Staten Island. I saw a blackbird, with what I thought was a butterfly in his mouth. The butterfly broke free and flew under our picnic table. It was a tiny green and yellow parakeet.
When I tried to capture him he flew into the lower branches of a nearby tree. My husband climbed on a table and gently pulled the limbs down while I went behind the tiny bird and put my sweater over him. At first we had nothing in which to keep him. We simply let him fly freely inside our camper. A few days later we got a cage for him. As soon as we put him inside, he tucked his little head under his wing and went to sleep. We don't think he had felt safe & secure in a long time.
We believe he had been owned by a Scotsman. One of the first phrases we taught him was, 'Lucky is a good boy.' A short time after we started this he piped up with, 'Lucky is a Wee Wee.' Finally, it dawned on us -- he had heard someone saying he was, 'a wee, wee bird.'
Whoever you are, your "Wee, Wee, Birdie" had a good home.
Oh yes they do talk! You have to listen carefully becuse a lot of times they "chirp" between words!
Can we research this?..I thought they didn't have big enough brains to be able to mimic..
are you calling parakeets "bird brains" ? ;-)
Wonder if this will take over from the Aruba disappearance as the lead story on the cable news networks...
I'd like to help--but how do you say, "come back little Peetuka!" in Hungarian?
Peetuka may make out okay in New York. You can see them flocking with sparrows there. How they survive I don't know, but they do.
I lost a beloved parakeet, Lindbergh, in Westchester County. He had climbed up on my shoulder and fell asleep in its hood, unbeknownst to me. When I went outside to get the mail he suddenly woke up and got scared, and flew off. I chased him and tried to find him for hours, but it was a blustery, cloudy day, and he was a gray-and-white 'keet so I couldn't see him well. I cried a lot, too. They can be dear little companions, and yes, they can speak if one is careful and focused in training them.
"Jöjj vissza kicsi Pityuka."
Thanks for the Hungarian for "Come back little Pityuka."
After an intensive search, I can testify that the bird is not on the Texas Gulf Coast between Houston and Galveston.
Or perhaps my accent wasn't too good.
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