Parrot reunites with owner post-storm

In the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl, there were many posts about pets gone missing or strays wandering into yards. Not all were of the four-legged variety. Laura Brown Anderson’s 1-year-old parrot, Clark, went on an hours-long adventure after accidentally flying out the family’s front door. “Driving around and putting out bulletins yielded no sign of Clark after three hours, leading me to fear he was gone for good.”

Returning outside after a dinner break, her grandson’s excited shouts alerted Laura to Clark’s presence high in a neighbor’s tree. The bird was making fearful sounds because of a dog below. “It was the first dog he had ever seen.” Despite attempts to coax him down, Clark didn’t budge. “Remembering that he responds to the color white, I grabbed a roll of paper towels, prompting him to fly to another nearby house and away from the dog.”

“With permission, I rolled his cage into their yard and resumed my coaxing efforts. Clark eventually settled in the tree for a nap, adding to the chaos of hurricane recovery as I fretted about losing him in the dark. No one had lights, and spotting him would get harder.”

When Laura stepped into a pile of fire ants and began trying to shake them off her feet, it scared Clark into flying toward home and landing in her neighbor’s tree across the street.

“He could see from his perch that we were rolling his cage home. All of a sudden, he made this loud noise that usually comes right before he lands on my shoulder. This time, he landed on our RV camper. As my husband went to get his fishing net, Clark climbed down to his cage. He put himself in and shut the door. Then he started eating and looked at me like nothing had happened.”

“Thank God he came back before dark. It was a nightmare, but we learned a huge lesson. Now I’m on super alert because I know he has a taste of the outdoors and flying high.”

Clark is quite the chatterbox. Among his phrases are, ‘What are you doing?’, ‘C’mere, baby,’ ‘Thank you,’ ‘Ouch,’ and ‘Kitty Cat,’ while calling the family’s cat, Elvis.