Guess what???

[JerseyWendy]

Oh Trish, I just saw the BEST news ever on FB first, and got 'insta-tears'. Now that I've read this thread here, I'm bawling once again. I love happy tears though!

I am beyond happy for you and your family! :smile015:

Welcome home, Barney!!!

 

[Dopey]

Christmas miracle. Wow! I am so happy for you and your family.

 

[Birdman666]

Can I happily say I told you so now?! :d This makes my day!

They do come home. Not always, but often...

You have to get the ads and the word out, beat the bushes, and above all else keep looking for them...

The ones that don't come home, are often the ones that people stop looking for!!!

Never give up!!!

 

[Dinosrawr]

This is AWESOME! I'm so happy that Barney was found!!! It's amazing the perseverance he had, as well as you. I'm so relieved and happy What a wonderful way to begin the Christmas holidays !

 

[Betrisher]

Mark, I have never, ever been so happy to be told 'I told you so'! LOL! I remember early on when you said 'Don't give up' - I thought 'Yeah-yeah, but Birdman doesn't understand the Australian environment. It's different here. There's no hope!'

Heehee! Birdman may not understand the Australian environment as well as I do, but he sure understands the psyches of birds! While I've been searching for Barney, I've seen many, many happy reunions with other lost birds and kept thinking 'I won't be lucky like that - my bird will never make it home'.

Well. How wrong was I? What brought Barney home was our (numerous) ads on facebook, gumtree and in local shops etc. Just as you said: put the word out there and don't stop searching.

What floors me is that Barn actually went gallivanting as far as he did. He's always been fully flighted, but only gets to fly around the house. I didn't think he'd be fit enough to make it very far away, but he was! Ten kilometres away! Amazing! I'd give anything to know what he did for those twenty-one days. He's pretty skinny now, so either the local gum blossoms weren't to his taste or he never discovered they were edible.

The other amazing thing is that a juvenile Alex flew away from me and the bird I was presented with this morning is an adult with a very obvious neck ring. My first reaction was 'Nah! Can't be him!'

But it WAS!

 

[Birdman666]

I love happy endings...

The memory of what I went through with Tusk is still fresh in my mind. So, I definitely know how you feel right now!

When we found Tusk a day later, and he flew off on me... and we didn't get him back, that was my low point... "He's really gone this time."

I kept looking, but I really didn't believe I'd find him again...

I not only found him - I found another one just like him, and in the process of looking, two others on top of that one found their way home.

Tusk lost a lot of weight when he got home, but frankly, he was getting fat, so it was probably good for him.

The mistake people make is they stop looking after a week or two, and it usually takes a week or two for them to get hungry enough to go looking for someone to take them in, and then another week or two for someone to find YOU looking for them...

And if you go, oh, he flew off... that's it. He's gone.

Then he's gone!!!

 

[Christinenc2000]

Great news.

 

[Diesel_Hyland]

YAY!!!! YAY!!!!!! YAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!
Our family and Diesel are SO HAPPY for you.
WONDERFUL news, what a lovely Christmas present.

 

[Anansi]

TRISH!!!! Yessssssssss! I am so amped over this amazing news! My heart went out to you when this all went down, my dear friend. It makes me so happy to learn that you and Madge are now reunited with Barney!!!

And that Sam was an absolute angel! I pray that she is able to recover her lost birds as well.

Whoo-hoo! Barney's back!

 

[strudel]

I've only just found this, I just searched to check that I hadn't missed a post on the thread that I'd subscribed to. I've been thinking that Barney was gone for good, and then I found this!

I'm so happy he's back home where he belongs, and Sam was so good taking him home and looking for you to reunite you with him. And what a clever little man, doing his trick to prove you were his mummy and he was your baby. It's like an HBO movie of the week. sob.

 

[kq_fan]

Oh my goodness! I know this was a while ago... I was looking through lost and found and saw you had posted Barney went missing!!! And on that thread you never found him! So I had to find out. I found this thread and I am so relived! Yay yay yay! Congratulations! I am so happy for you, your family, and Madge!

 

[Betrisher]

Thank you! We're still getting over the whole incident, from the horror of thinking Barn was gone for good to the amazement of having him returned to us after three weeks at large in the Big Wide World. He was found ten kilometres away from home, just lollygaggin' around with the wild lorikeets. The last we had seen of him, he was flying off toward a thousand-acre swamp and I just assumed he'd wind up dinner for a bird of prey. The feeling of loss was just dreadful, especially having to see poor little Madge so depressed every day.

Then we got Barney back and the sun came out again!

My wise daughter said to me the other day: 'It's good to remember how we got Barney back - just to remind ourselves to be thankful'. I couldn't agree more.