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Reader JMAC emailed us this photograph of a sign seen on a Chelsea block. He wonders:
First, how could you lose your small green parakeet in the middle of winter?...how exactly could they be sure that the parakeet was "freezing" (was it shivering, or did it have a stuttering chirp, if a chirp it had at all)?...is "claim" really the correct word to use in such a case?...How the feehuck did a small jungle bird actually survive Tuesday's temperatures? Would you actually make up these signs if the bird wasn't okay? Surely there were others. Thank God for the good bird samaritans.Those are really good questions. Gothamist can only assume that the parakeet was planning a mad break for warmer weather in the South, say, Battery Park City, but got caught up in checking out the Whole Foods and other new establishments in the neighborhood. Perhaps the parakeet was looking to roost near a steampipe or restaurant exhaust fan; though the body-surface-to-volume ratios are very different, somehow pigeons manage to keep warm! Maybe some people will demand that the parakeet get a home on Fifth Avenue.
More pet signs in Lost: Lost and Found Pet Posters From Around The World. And here's some information on how birds stay warm. But there is a drink called The Frozen Bird. This incident also reminds Gothamist of when kill the bird left us know about the found sock in Union Square.
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Slow news day?
Instead of a pet could the bird be a feral parakeet?
The person writing in seems to take issue with the sign just for the sake of taking issue with the sign. Was it really worth taking a photo and sending it in? Does it really matter what the sign says if it gets the attention of the bird's owner? Does asking so many questions about so many questions make me an unmitigated prick as well?
The bird was found in Chelsea, so it's obviously gay. It's owner probably watches Spongebob. The homosexual agenda continues...
lol@Dirk
Cheers
It could also be a monk parakeet, the only parakeet to build it's own nests and to stay active throughout winter. Over the past half century they have been steadilly entering urban areas across the US. Originally brought to the states as pets, they have little problem sitting through the cold months in their easily spotted nests (they look like big balls of twigs with one hole in them, and unlike squirrel nests don't have newspapers and things in them). The first recorded sightings of them in the wild was in the 60's on Long Island (probably from a container at JFK). The most famous of the monk parakeet populations in the US is the huge group of them that lives in Hyde Park, Chicago.
a few sites on monk parakeets in the us:
http://www.bridgeport.edu/~robert/parrot.htm
http://invasions.bio.utk.edu/invaders/monk.html
Hyde Park in Chicago has a flock of parakeets of its own:
http://chicagowildernessmag.org/issues/winter2003/monkparakeets.html
http://www.monkparakeet.com/jmsouth/
There are lots of (wild) monk parakeets in Brooklyn. I've seen tons near Brooklyn College.
Whoever rescued the bird should be weary of Anthrax:
Anthrax is a disease that mainly affects ungulates or in other words cloven footed animals like domestic and wild herbivores - - includes green parakeets.