Strangers came to aid of beloved parrot

Shakespeare wrote that there’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. And maybe in the passing of a parrot. Because when a St. Paul woman asked for help on social media to help rescue her lost parrot, a lot of strangers heard, listened and came to her aid.

This story does not have a happy ending. Except for the way it illustrates how willing humans can be to help another creature in need. Nerys was named after a character in the television show “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.”

She was a nanday conure, a bright green parrot originally found in South America. She was 15, and the pet of Scancy Aiken, who lives in the Hamline-Midway neighbourhood of St. Paul.

“A little green parrot, sweet and outgoing,” Aiken said. “She liked hanging out on my shoulder while we did the dishes.” But on the morning of Sept. 2, the first day of school, one of Aiken’s sons left the door open going in and out of the house. Nerys flew out. She ended up stuck in a neighbour’s tree near Snelling and Edmund avenues, where she stayed overnight. “I can see her, I can hear her. I just can’t get to her,” Aiken posted on Facebook the next morning. “I think she’s stuck. She keeps squacking like she wants to be picked up. It’s chilly, and windy. She’s been up there all night.”

Aiken asked the Hamline neighbourhood on Facebook: Does anyone have a long ladder? Or is really good at climbing trees? And someone showed up with tree climbing gear, a man Aiken said mainly spoke Spanish. She only knows his first name, Jamie.

“He was really nice,” Aiken said. “I assumed he was some kind of tree trimmer.”

“We got her to fly out of the tree,” Aiken wrote on Facebook of what happened next to her bird. “Unfortunately she took off in the wrong direction towards the park. I’m going out on my bike now to see if I can track her down.”

Aiken didn’t know where the bird went at first. She asked some people who were hanging out in the alley by a nearby gas station if they had seen the parrot. They started helping in the search for Nerys.

“They’re like the alley way people. They aren’t necessarily the height of society. But they definitely helped that day,” Aiken said. “People are willing to come together to help an innocent bird.”

Eventually, Nerys was located in another tree on the boulevard on Thomas Avenue near Snelling next to Jehovah Lutheran Church.

The church offered the use of its ladder, but it wasn’t high enough. A neighbour climbed up the tree and wedged a pet carrier with bird food in it up in the branches, but Nerys couldn’t be tempted to get in it. Then another person who had read of the bird’s saga on Facebook came by and climbed about 20 feet up and spent about 15 minutes in the tree using nothing but a clothesline to help him try to get to the bird.

Suddenly, Nerys dropped out of the tree and landed on the pavement. Aiken tried to run to get her. But the bird flew up and out toward Snelling Avenue, where she was hit by a vehicle. Sobbing, Aiken ran out into traffic to pick up her bird from the street. The man who climbed the tree wondered if Nerys was just stunned and he tried to take her pulse. But she had died. “She was really weak and scared and couldn’t fly very far,” Aiken said. “She was dead when I got to her.”

Aiken brought Nerys home and wrapped her in a towel. The next day, the pastor from Jehovah Lutheran Church came by and read some Bible verses as Nerys was laid in a hole in Aiken’s yard. “It was all very sweet and meaningful. It had a sense of occasion,” Aiken said. “It brought closure and peace to the situation.”

“Even though it ended kind of sad, it was really cool how the community came together to help even at the very end,” Aiken said.