Ziggy's Big Adventure
LOCAL BIRD RETURNED HOME AFTER TWO DAYS MISSING
Ziggy, a local bird, took a big—albeit accidental—adventure to Washburn Island during the weekend of May 19 after he escaped from his home on Main Street in Falmouth.
Ashley Coleman, Ziggy’s owner, adopted the nearly 2-year old parakeet from Petco during the pandemic. He was not a tame bird and flew around his Petco cage wanting nothing to do with anybody, Ms. Coleman said, but she and her family worked to hand-feed him and get him acclimated to his new home. Once he was comfortable, Ziggy started to show his personality.
“He thinks he’s a human, to be honest,” she said. “He can’t get enough; he wants to do everything we do. If my phone rings, he comes right over and he wants to push the buttons with his beak on the phone. In the morning when I make coffee, he has to be part of it and he climbs on my arm and every day he does the same thing; he puts his little beak in and then kind of just shakes it off, like ‘oh I don’t like this, but I need to just pretend that I do.’ He just wants to be part of everything.”
Wanting to be part of everything may explain why, on the foggy and rainy evening of May 19, Ziggy flew out the door of their home while Ms. Coleman took the recycling out.
“We’d gotten home, and my little girl let him out of the cage,” she said. “He went to be right with me and landed on my shoulder right when I was walking out the door… It was such a blur because I had my hands full of recycle bags. My little girl is 8 and she’s the one who said, ‘Mummy! Ziggy!’ and I went to turn my head like, ‘What is she saying?’ It was just like a flash; he went to land on me and then I just couldn’t tell where he went. So instantly we were in pure panic, pure tears.”
The neighborhood quickly rallied behind the family to help search high and low for Ziggy, but due to weather conditions, they mainly searched low. Ms. Coleman knew from past experience that if Ziggy gets too wet—like when he gives himself a bird bath alongside Ms. Coleman’s 8-year-old daughter at bath time—he basically gets too waterlogged to fly.
“I figured for sure because of the experiences with him trying to go in the tub that he was just going to flutter right over the neighbors’ fences into the bushes because he wouldn’t have the wing strength that wild birds have,” Ms. Coleman said.
As the foggy Thursday evening turned into an even foggier Friday, there was still no sign of Ziggy.
“It was really foggy. It was really hard to even see—it was so foggy that evening,” Ms. Coleman said. “I kept praying and kept my faith that somehow he’d return to us because he loves us so much.”
On Saturday afternoon, Ms. Coleman’s prayers were answered in the form of a post on the Facebook group Fabulous Falmouth.
“Somebody posted on Fabulous Falmouth with Ziggy on their finger, took a picture and said, ‘We’re on Washburn Island and just found a bird; is anybody missing their bird?’” Ms. Coleman said. “Within 22 minutes, my mom had seen it, called me, and was like ‘Oh my gosh.’”
As it turns out, a couple was lounging on Washburn Island when Ziggy flew over and landed on the man, walked up his leg, and perched there.
“They were just shocked because that’s not something you’d ever see in the wild,” Ms. Coleman said.
Ziggy got to take a boat ride with the couple from Washburn back to shore, where Ms. Coleman was waiting to be reunited with her bird.
“He’s back home, he’s healthy and he’s happy. His head literally didn’t come out of the food bowl and water for the first 12 hours; he was absolutely exhausted.”
Washburn Island is six and a half miles from the Colemans’ home on Main Street, which deepened the mystery of how Ziggy made his way out there and managed to survive the damp and chilly conditions that he is not acclimated to for two days. After the post gained traction on Facebook, additional people reached out to Ms. Coleman saying that they, too, think they saw Ziggy during his adventure, all the way over in East Falmouth and Teaticket.
“It’s absolutely a miracle,” Ms. Coleman said. “It’s just one of those stories that I feel like it’s like winning the lottery.”
The Colemans are very happy to have Ziggy home again, safe and sound, but cannot help but wonder what he got up to while he was out.
“I just can’t even imagine what he saw,” Ms. Coleman said. “If only he could talk.”