By Paul Sloth
Journal Times | Posted: Tuesday, July 8, 2008 12:00 am
DOVER - The bird perched on a railing at Jay Noble's dairy farm Thursday didn't seem out of the ordinary, at first.
Noble's brother, John, who works at the farm on Highway A in Dover, walked toward the bird, thinking it was just another pigeon, until he saw the red tail.
That's when John Noble, 27, knew the bird in the barn was no pigeon. The grey bird with the red tail was a parrot that took off four days earlier from its bird sitter's house in the Town of Rochester as it was being taken inside.
"It was kind of weird," said John Noble, who counts finding the parrot as one of the strangest things he's seen. "We didn't really know what to do about it."
Seven miles away, Jan and Tim Elsen hoped to find Czarote, the 11-year-old African Congo Grey parrot that never made it into their home on Westwood Avenue on June 30.
That was the day their friend, Paul Armetta, planned to drop Czarote off for a brief stay while he and his family vacationed. The two families often swap bird sitting duties.
Armetta, a software designer and director of Burlington's CATHE Center, hoped his pet would stay put in the woods around the Elsens' home.
Little did he know his talkative and friendly bird, who can sing arpeggios and imitate a microwave oven beeping, would fly roughly seven miles east, not straying far from Highway A, a come to rest at a dairy farm.
Upon finding the bird, Noble called his brother, Jay, over to the shed where the bird rested.
Jay brought his wife, Rhiannon, and their children, Kathrine, 5, and Mason, 3, out to the barn to see the parrot. Kathrine likes parrots, but she'd never seen one up close. They took pictures of their avian visitor. Jay called his mother, Liz, who lives down the road.
" 'You're not going to believe this: There's a parrot that flew into the barn,' " Liz Noble said her son said. (story continues after video)
Jay Noble called his old veterinarian in Waterford to see if anyone knew about any parrots that had gone missing. No, they said.
His next call was to the Racine County Sheriff's Department. Someone there told Noble that indeed a parrot had gone missing, according to a flier they were looking at, and instructed them to call the Burlington Police Department.
The police gave Noble a few phone numbers to call.
The person at the Sheriff's Department also mentioned a story about the parrot. Liz Noble searched online by using as many combinations as she could think of. She landed on a story about a local parrot that had flown away.
The Elsens eventually received a call from the Noble family, announcing that they'd found the parrot. Jan Elsen remained optimistic that Czarote would turn up, she said.
"Paul said, 'He's friendly. He'll find a place to roost.' And he did," Jan Elsen said.
By Sunday, Czarote was back to his old self, singing and talking … and talking … and talking.
"He's just a riot," Elsen said.