When beloved pets go missing, we search through stress and sorrow, posting pictures on telephone poles and flooding lost-and-found websites.
But buried among the many stories of disappeared dogs and cat cold cases is a steady stream of pleas from people searching for animals that are far harder to track down: cockatiels. If you thought finding Mr. Whiskers was difficult, imagine if he could fly.
As the weather begins to grow too cold for these birds from the other side of the world, the quixotic efforts to find them are growing desperate. These searches play out publicly on yard signs and online, strange and sincere testaments to the powerful attachments people forge with animals whose minds are as mysterious as their brains are tiny.
Advertisement
“It was one of the worst moments I’ve ever had,” said Melissa Zilembo of the instant not long ago in which her beloved Felicia swooped over her shoulder and out the front door of her Merrimac home. Now, the bird she raised by hand — after rescuing a featherless chick from the home of a hoarder — graces yard signs while out-of-state animal psychics mine the ether for her whereabouts.
“You pick up on their energy, basically,” said Laurie Blomer, a plainspoken psychic from outside Philadelphia who used pictures and Zilembo’s description to try to get a handle on Felicia’s whereabouts.
A cockatiel’s energy is a curious thing, and they make for imperfect pets. They screech and they bite and they gnaw the wallpaper.
Smart in ways that are difficult to discern and stupid in ways that are glaringly obvious, they are built, fundamentally, to fly away.
“What I clearly got was a vantage point of ‘up,’ ” Blomer said, while acknowledging that predicting that a missing bird might very well be in a tree doesn’t require a psychic.
Advertisement
Blomer says her methods have reunited pets and people, successes that have led to a steady word-of-mouth business.
“My bird clientele is increasing,” she said.
And yet, Felicia is still missing.
Further complicating matters, said Michael Sazhin, who has performed as the Parrot Wizard on the “Late Show with David Letterman” and “America’s Got Talent,” is the fact that birds raised in captivity have no particular idea of where they’re going once they’re outside.
The cockatiels like Felicia who show up on posters and websites like craigslist and 911parrotalert.com are akin to a toddler who runs blindly out the door and up the sidewalk, only to realize all the houses look alike.
“These birds are raised in captivity — they have no connection to the wild,” said Sazhin. “There’s no longing for the wild.”
Denys and Julia Lebedev are searching for Kiwi, who crash-landed in their lives four years ago.
Julia was having lunch in Christian Science Plaza when she noticed a commotion at the reflecting pool. A cockatiel had splashed into the water, and was swimming over to the side.
Julia threw her scarf on it and brought it home — she’d always wanted a dog, but the Lebedevs’ apartment was too small. In an instant, they had become cockatiel owners.
After more than a year of enduring Kiwi’s shrieking, they got her a friend — Mango, who calmed Kiwi’s nerves and learned to say “Mango is a birdie” in Russian.
But all it took was a gust of wind and an unsecured door for Kiwi to fly away in August. Mango alerted Denys with some frantic screeching, but it was too late.
Advertisement
He searched, with Mango in a cage calling for Kiwi, until it got dark. The next day, a Saturday, Denys and Julia spotted Kiwi in a tree a few houses away. They camped out, called the fire department and waited again until dark. When they came back that morning, she was gone for good.
“You get attached to a creature you kind of found or rescued,” Julia said. Denys was crestfallen, and hasn’t forgiven himself for not clipping her wings.
Not long after Kiwi disappeared, a neighbor spotted an exhausted cockatiel in his tree and called Denys.
The neighbor trapped it and deposited the bird in the cage that was standing empty in the Lebedevs’ yard.
Denys raced home, excited that the bird to which he was devoted was finally home.
But it wasn’t Kiwi. Someone else’s missing cockatiel had wandered into Kiwi’s old neighborhood in Canton.
After a few weeks of very loud quarantine — Mango and his new friend engaged in epic screeching matches from opposite sides of the house — the two birds are now living happily together, nibbling on Denys’s gold necklace or riding around on Julia’s shoulders.
The Lebedevs haven’t given the new bird a name yet. They’re calling him Old Man, and don’t want to get too attached in case his human arrives to take him far away — but they can’t help themselves.
Advertisement
Blomer — who wasn’t enlisted to search for Kiwi — believes animals are often put here to teach people lessons: “Sometimes it has to do with letting go. Sometimes it has to do with forgiveness.”
And sure, sometimes it’s neither.
But sometimes it’s both.
Nestor Ramos can be reached at nestor.ramos@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @NestorARamos.