After Stephanie Mitchell of Guttenberg placed missing posters around Hudson County last month offering a $2,000 reward for the return of her white-faced cockatiel, she heard her neighbors reading the posters and making wisecracks, not realizing she was standing right there.
“They would say, ‘The bird is dead. Why isn’t she giving up?’ ” said Mitchell, a resident of the Galaxy apartment complex, last week. “I was like, ‘Hello! It’s me.’ For seven and a half years I had her.”
Mitchell lost the bird on Nov. 19 when her husband, Barry Milberg, was unpacking their car. He dropped the carrying case, and the bird – whose name is Tita – flew out. Tita had attended the couple’s wedding, as did their other cockatiel, Tito.
After Tita disappeared, Mitchell went right to work, plastering flyers around Guttenberg, placing ads and photos in the Reporter newspapers, and submitting ads to Spanish-language newspapers. Cockatiels are hand-fed birds, and experts told Mitchell that the bird would likely remain close to home.
Obviously, placing ads offering a $2,000 cash reward will result in some unusual phone calls.
“Yesterday morning there was a woman who called and started screaming at me that Tita flew to the Amazon,” Mitchell said on Tuesday. “Her phone number showed up on Caller ID. I asked her, ‘Why would you make a call like this,’ and she was being serious. I had a drunk man telling me Tita was smushed under a New Jersey Transit bus. I had teenagers swearing they had the bird.”
But she had some positive phone calls also. One man called to tell her he had seen a “found bird” ad in another newspaper and wanted to connect her with the person who placed it.
But alas, it was a dead end.
Mitchell was wary of imposters, but she didn’t give up hope. She stated clearly in her ad that Tita had specific markings that would allow her to identify her.
Then, this past Monday afternoon, she got a good feeling when an elderly woman called, speaking in Spanish.
Wing and a prayer
The elderly woman, who lives nearby, attends a senior day care center in West New York, Casa Manito on 55th Street. She speaks only Spanish, so a worker at Casa Manito helped translate for her.
Her name was Manuela, and this was her story:
The day after the bird was lost, the bird flew onto Manuela’s chest as she was getting onto the bus with her friend, Elvira. The two women brought Tita onto the bus with them. Elvira took the bird home and gave it to her grandkids, and that’s where Tita has been staying since.
At one point, Manuela’s son saw the flyers and told his mother about them. The son said, “This woman thinks she’s going to find her bird.” Manuela responded, “I found her bird!”
Around the same time, Elvira saw an ad in a Spanish newspaper.
So the women called Mitchell from the retirement center. Mitchell arranged to meet them there this past Monday evening.
Chirping with joy
“What actually happened is, they said to me, ‘The bird is in the [dining] hall,’ ” Mitchell said last week. “I walked in with our male bird in carrying case, along with my father and my husband. The male bird chirped, and Tita started chirping back, and I knew it was her. They both started chirping at each other.”
The date was Dec. 10, a whopping three weeks after the bird had flown away.
Mitchell said that she was happy to part with her cash in this situation.
“I was not emotionally attached to my money,” she said. “I was emotionally attached to the bird.”
And it provided the two senior citizens with an extra-special holiday.
Mitchell said that during the course of her search, she found out that another nearby person found a bird recently, so if there is a bird-owner who recently lost a bird, they should do a search.
“People say it’s a miracle, but I put a lot of work into this,” she said. ” ‘No’ was not an option.”
Mitchell said that often, when someone finds a bird, they don’t report it. “It’s not like a dog,” she said.
So what is Tita the lucky cockatiel doing right now?
“She is now currently walking around the floor with Tito, her mate,” Mitchell said.