A pet parrot navigated Saskatchewan's living skies in a daring escape that took it 500 kilometres away from home.
Bleu the Indian Ringneck's adventure took her from her home in the village of Torquay, which is 165 kilometres southeast of Regina, all the way to Prince Albert in north-central Saskatchewan.
Bleu flew the coop — or rather, the cage — from Rhys MacLean's parents' home on May 3, when she raced toward an open door as MacLean's stepfather was walking into the house from the garage. MacLean said his mother, 75, and stepfather had never had an issue with keeping Bleu in the house, so her cage door was often kept open.
"She flew out the open door, did a couple of victory laps in the garage and then flew out the [other] door and we thought she was gone forever," MacLean told Peter Mills, host of CBC Radio's The 306.
MacLean said everyone felt awful about Bleu's escape, and the fact that she was airborne made finding her seem impossible.
"My step-dad just felt terrible.… It was just an honest accident. [Bleu's] never done that before or been anywhere close to that."
Rhys MacLean with his mother's two parrots on his shoulders: Bleu, left, and Kiwi, right. (Submitted by Rhys MacLean)
MacLean said his mother and stepfather moved to Torquay from Calgary in 2024, and he believed the new surroundings led to a change in Bleu's behaviour.
"We all had that sinking feeling we were never going to find this bird," he said.
The 306 8:57 Lost pet parrot found more than 500 kilometres away from home in Sask. Rhys MacLean joins The 306 to talk about how his family's pet parrot, Blue, flew more than 500 kilometres north from Torquay to Prince Albert, and was found and returned safely back home.
'Zero optimism' Bleu would be found
MacLean said he didn't know how to go about trying to find Bleu, but he wrote a Facebook post on the community lost and found page for the nearby city of Estevan. He said he had "zero optimism" this would lead to discovering the rogue parrot's whereabouts.
"To be honest with you, I wrote the post as kind of like a closure thing because I didn't know how else to be there for my mom or my step-dad. And I knew how bad they felt," he said, adding he laced the post with wit and humour to "lighten the mood."
MacLean said there was an outpouring of people sending Facebook messages trying to help with the search for the fugitive parrot.
"People were really on the ball with that. I had people messaging me at 2:30 in the morning, recording sounds, bird sounds, in their backyard in Estevan, be like, 'This sounds like a weird kind of exotic bird,'" he said.
"So the people really pulled together and they were actually really keeping an eye out."
While the community sent in many tips, MacLean said none of them seemed promising. Even though Bleu is a domestic bird, she is very difficult to catch, even in a closed space. If someone found the bird, MacLean said he figured that by the time he or his dad could get there, she'd be long gone.
Bleu the parrot was AWOL for about a month before showing up in Prince Albert. (Submitted by Rhys MacLean)
MacLean said overall, he felt hopeless.
But when he got a message that a woman in Prince Albert had alerted the Saskatoon Parrot Rescue she had captured a blue parrot a month after Bleu had escaped, it was "quite shocking."
MacLean said his stepfather brought Bleu's cage-mate Kiwi along to meet the captured parrot, which was indeed identified as Bleu.
Mission Impossible: Complete.
"She came home looking like she'd just done a military tour: skinny, sun-bleached, a little shell-shocked," MacLean said. "But within weeks, she was back to her usual sassy self, eating like every meal was her last, and goofing with Kiwi again."
[SRC] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/indian-ringneck-parrot-escape-saskatchewan-1.7650612
