Parakeet Finds Way Home By Saying Own Address
The address-knowing bird and its owners.
The Kochi Shimbun is reporting (J) about an unusually sharp and rather lost parakeet named P-chan (yes, the same as that P-chan, an ironic coincidence that will not be lost on Ranma 1/2 fans) that found its way home safely by telling the person who found it where it lived.
In February a Mr. Okabayashi found a cute little Budgie wandering around a parking lot apparently searching for food among the fallen leaves. He asked around the neighborhood, but wasn’t able to find the bird’s owner, so he took it home. It became attached to him over the next few days, but imagine his surprise when it began saying “Ochi-cho, Ikku, Nishikawa P-chan” — apparently the parakeet’s hometown, neighborhood, and full name.
A member of Okabayashi’s family happened to work at the Ochi post office, so they turned to the postmaster, Mr. Inoue, for help. Ochi is a small town, so while several households in the Ikku neighborhood have the family name Nishikawa, the postmaster used his considerable mail delivery experience to guess which of them seemed the most likely to have a parakeet.
The postmaster’s first guess turned out to be correct: An 81-year-old man and his 75-year-old wife.
The Nishikawas had bought a budgie last year, and had been teaching her a variety of words, among them her full name and address. The smart little bird is also able to say “1 + 1 is 2, 2 + 2 is I don’t know,” and “Suki, suki, daisuki” (“I love you, I love you, I really love you!”). They said that P-chan was part of their family.
However, on February 11th, when they were cleaning P-chan’s cage the bird escaped through a gap and disappeared. The cold weather had them worrying that their beloved parakeet would freeze to death, and whenever they heard the sound of birds they would go looking for little P-chan.
But, thanks to a combination of bird-smarts and good luck Mr. and Mrs. Nishikawa have their P-chan back now. They told the Kochi Shimbun that they are very thankful that the conscientious bird-finder paid attention to P-chan and the kind postmaster used his position in the small town to help locate them.
P-chan is again entertaining the Nishikawas, now by saying “P-chan orikou! P-chan orikou!” (“P-chan is smart!”)
April 4th, 2007 at 12:11 am
P-Chan?? I guess he gets lots a lot 🙂
April 4th, 2007 at 1:19 am
Egad… although I went so far as to point out the P-chan coincidence to Akemi while she was writing this story, I can’t believe that I failed to toss a Ryoga getting lost joke in there.
It has been fixed.