Coco the Quaker parrot is a sociable sort. He likes to join his owners during meals, his custom made perch reserving him a spot at the dinner table. He plays tag with Huckleberry, the resident Chihuahua, and lets his owners know when he needs to go to the bathroom by croaking “Go potty.”
At night, he sleeps in a cage a few feet away from Amos Sauer’s bed, but during the day, when the family is home, Coco has the run of the house and often settles on the head of Amos or his mother Wenonah Madison as they sit on the couch or walk from room to room.
And that is where the problem started.
“He was on my head but I didn’t notice, because he is there all the time,” Ms. Madison said during a recent visit to their home in West Tisbury. “I walked outside to take out the trash, not knowing he was going outside with me, and then he got scared by a gust of wind and the leaves rustling.”
Ms. Madison watched Coco fly higher and higher until he disappeared, starting a five-day frantic search for the parrot by the family, friends and an ever-expanding group of concerned Islanders.
When Coco flew away on Monday, Oct. 5, Amos, a senior at Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School, was off-Island on a college tour, his father, Dan Sauer, was at work, and Ms. Madison was due for knee surgery in Boston later that day.
Her ferry was leaving in 45 minutes.
“I Googled what to do and it said you have a very short window to get a bird back, and that they almost never come back without human intervention,” she said.
But Ms. Madison didn’t even have a short window. She had to go to the ferry immediately. Not knowing what else to do, she left all the windows and doors open, hoping Coco would simply fly back home. But Coco did not fly back home. Instead, he spent the next week fending for himself while the Madison/Sauers spent the week wandering the woods calling his name.
Ms. Madison texted Amos’s friend group about what had happened and asked them to be on the lookout. She didn’t tell her son the news yet, not wanting to ruin his college tour, but eventually let him know the next day.
“I called him on the drive back from surgery, and said, ‘Oh, I have some bad news,’ and he goes, ‘Did you kill my bird?’ and I go, ‘Maybe.’”
When Ms. Madison returned home, now in a cast and hobbling on crutches, she encountered a driveway filled with cars and teenage boys who had been out looking for Coco, and also consoling Amos. Coco was still lost and as of yet there were no sightings.
There was still some hope, however. Internet searches revealed that escaped pet Quaker parrots, originally from South America, have survived, and even thrived, in the wild, building large populations in the U.S., from mingling with the retired seniors in Florida to the hipsters of Brooklyn. The parrots live on seeds and berries along with insects and worms so food was still abundant.
But predators on the Vineyard abound and Tuesday, Oct. 6, ended with no sightings.
Then, on Wednesday afternoon, a text came in from Kristy Fletcher, a second grade teacher from the West Tisbury School.
“Are you missing a white parrot?”
Ms. Madison immediately texted the family group chat: “Bird alert, bird alert, everyone meet at the West Tisbury school.”
Family and friends converged and ran around the school and fields looking for Coco, all except Ms. Madison, who had to search from a mostly stationary position.
“I should not have been walking just after surgery, so Amos and Dan are out there running around and calling the bird,” she said. “But there’s a soccer game going on in the back field, another soccer game going on the front field, and a tennis match going on. It’s so loud, and I just want to yell, ‘Stop it, the bird can’t hear us.’”
The evening ended in defeat. Thursday was no better, with no bird sightings of any kind.
Then, on Friday morning, Laura Marashlian, the director of the Plum Hill School, a preschool that embraces long nature walks, checked in.
“We just saw Coco,” Ms. Marashlian wrote. “I heard the weirdest noise, and I knew it was the bird.”
The preschoolers did their best, fanning out and craning their necks to look up into the tall trees around Nat’s Farm. Ms. Madison sent an audio file of her saying Coco, so the bird would be attracted by a familiar voice.
Ms. Madison also sent another bird alert to her family text chat and everyone joined the search, but Coco was nowhere to be found.
“Amos kept walking around the ancient ways back there for hours,” Ms. Madison said. “But it was getting dark and I told him to just come home.”
The next day Ms. Madison received a new text message.
“I live in Vineyard Haven, and my daughter saw a post from you on Facebook about the parrot that flew away. She has something for you and for your kid,” the text said.
The message sounded a bit cryptic, perhaps a prank or a scam, but Ms. Madison called the number.
“I call him back and he’s like, I have something for you, can we meet? And I’m like, ‘What do you have?’”
The text was sent by Jaoa Prata, who later said he was worried about being specific.
“I didn’t want to say I have the bird and then it turns out to not be the right bird,” he said. “And I wanted it to be a surprise.”
Earlier that day, Mr. Prata had driven to the Tisbury School to pick up his 10-year-old daughter Lara, a fourth grader there. When she opened the door to her father’s truck a white bird was perched on her shoulder.
“She was smiling so much, and the bird looked happy too,” Mr. Prata said during an interview with the Gazette a few days later. “Lara loves animals and wants to be a veterinarian when she grows up.”
Lara agreed she wants to be a vet, but at the moment was preparing for soccer practice. She wore cleats and occasionally dribbled a soccer ball as she recounted the story of finding Coco.
“I heard this little sound and I looked down on the ground and there it was,” she said. “It looked like a statue, and I didn’t even know if it was alive because it wasn’t moving.”
Lara bent down and the bird swiveled its head slightly so she put out her finger.
“It hopped on my finger and then started looking up at my shoulder so I put him there and he didn’t fly away.”
Coco stayed with Lara on the walk to the truck and the ride home, with a stop at Cronig’s to pick up some food.
“I knew it must be someone’s pet, and so would be hungry after being out in the wild,” Mr. Prata said. “We bought it some grain and broccoli and strawberries. The bird was very thirsty too.”
Mr. Prata then began asking friends if they knew anyone who had lost a parrot. Eventually, he turned to social media, a place he rarely visits, he said, “because of all the anger there.”
He soon saw the posts by Ms. Madison, detailing the story of Coco’s escape and contacted her.
The next day, the Pratas brought Coco home to the Madison/Sauers. When asked if she was sad to say goodbye to Coco, Lara shook her head.
“Not really, because I got to see people be happy,” Lara said.
The Madison/Sauer family were indeed happy to see Coco, who also seemed a bit relieved that her time in the wild had come to the end. She quickly returned to her various perches atop the family members’ heads, playing tag with Huckleberry and being an active participant at dinner.
Meanwhile, Amos returned to his project of trying to teach Coco some new swear words.