Harri had been gone eleven days when a captain three days out of Australia noticed a pink and grey bird sunning itself on deck. Her family had already stopped looking.
A Bird Missing In Brisbane
Harri was a galah, eight years old, and she went out of a Brisbane house on 13 January. Neither of the news reports that followed says how she got out.
Her owners did what most people do first. They put an appeal out on social media and waited for somebody nearby to spot a pink and grey bird where a pink and grey bird should not be.
The family is Brett and Michelle Cozzi and their daughter Georgia, who was four at the time. All three of them were, as it turned out, about to leave the country.
Nothing came back. Not that day, and not in the days that followed.
Eleven Days Of Nothing
The New Daily records what happened next in one flat sentence: after desperate attempts to find their beloved pet, the family eventually gave up hope.
They had a holiday already booked — a four-day cruise to the Whitsundays aboard the Pacific Aria. They went on it without her.
It helps to know what kind of bird they had lost. Galahs are cockatoos, and the older Birds’n’Ways guide to the family notes that cockatoos are natural born escape artists and puzzle solvers.
That is not a remark about temperament. It is a description of what a clever, bored bird eventually does with a latch, a flyscreen or a gap.
Sunbathing Three Days Out
On 24 January, somebody aboard a cruise ship noticed a galah getting some sun.
The ship was the Sea Princess, headed for Fiordland at the southern end of New Zealand’s South Island. It had sailed from Australia three days earlier.
The date carries a small discrepancy worth naming. SBS News puts the sighting on 24 January and The New Daily says she was found on 25 January, though both agree on the three days at sea.
Either way, Harri had been missing for eleven days, and she was no longer anywhere a search party could reach her.
A Short Flight To The Wharf
Harri’s own vet had a theory about how a house bird ends up on an ocean liner, and it is far less exotic than the headline suggests. Dr Adrian Gallagher of Brisbane Bird Vet told the ABC he suspected she had flown straight from the Cozzis’ home to the wharf.
“From the owner’s place to the wharf is probably not that far for a galah,” he said. “That’s my thought, he’s escaped and landed on the boat.” Gallagher refers to Harri as “he” throughout; her family and the biosecurity officials use “she”.
He was plainly taken with her. “He’s got a lot of character this bird,” Gallagher said. “He’s pretty ingenious.”
The short distance is the whole point, and it is the part owners underestimate. A bird that has never flown further than a hallway can clear a suburb in one panicked launch, which is why the five-minute check that stops a warm-day escape matters more than any recovery plan.
The Cozzis’ first move — post it online and wait — is what almost everyone does. It is also not the move with the best odds, and there is a specific sequence that works better in the first forty-eight hours after a bird gets out.
The Rule That Nearly Killed Her
The happy ending was never guaranteed. The New Daily reports that under New Zealand biosecurity law Harri would have had to be euthanised if the crew had been unwilling to care for her, for fear of spreading avian disease.
The captain was willing. That one decision, made by a man who had not asked for a stowaway parrot, is the reason this story has a reunion at the end of it.
She spent the rest of the voyage locked in an unoccupied cabin and was checked on by New Zealand officials at every port, according to Jackie South, the Australian agriculture department’s acting head of animal biosecurity.
Galahs are native only to Australia, which is what made her a problem rather than a curiosity. “Australia and New Zealand treat biosecurity very seriously,” South said, “especially in regards to foreign species.”
A Microchip And A Leg Ring
The ship’s captain contacted biosecurity officials on both sides of the Tasman. They found the owners, SBS News reports, because Harri was carrying a microchip and a leg ring identifying her as a pet.
Nothing else about her would have narrowed it down. A galah in Australia is not a rare sighting, and there was no way to tell a lost pet from a wild bird on sight alone.
Gallagher used the case to make a point he clearly makes often. “We see stacks of lost birds,” he told the ABC. “You’ve only got to go on RSPCA websites to see how many there are. And one galah looks the same as the next galah.”
For the Cozzis the news arrived out of nowhere, well after they had stopped expecting any. “When the call came through from Agriculture Australia, it was a bit of a shock,” Michelle Cozzi told Seven News.
Both Holidays Ended At Once
Harri came home on a Sunday morning, after fourteen days at sea and a clean bill of health. “On return to Australia she passed a veterinary examination, and has now been returned to her owners,” South said, “who themselves have just returned from a cruise.”
South allowed herself one line of levity about the coincidence. “Perhaps Harri felt she too needed a holiday,” she said.
Michelle Cozzi was less measured about it. “We are very excited to have Harri home because she is a much-loved member and indispensable part of our family,” she told Seven News. “It was amazing to discover she had been found on another cruise ship. It was just the best news possible.”
Her husband seemed mostly aware of how the whole thing sounded. “You could forgive some people for not believing it,” Brett Cozzi told The Australian. “It’s good to be part of a good news story. My humble thanks to all the people involved.”
The veterinary examination is the detail worth copying. Any bird that comes back from days outdoors gets checked, and it is worth knowing what to do in the first fifteen minutes at home before the appointment.
Gallagher drew the obvious conclusion for everyone else. Microchip the bird, he said — because the difference between Harri and the stacks of lost birds nobody claims was two small pieces of identification saying who she belonged to, and a captain who decided to keep her.
Not every escape ends on a windowsill in Brisbane. If you want the version where the odds run the other way, read about a Manhattan cockatiel who got out two days before a hurricane.
Source: SBS News and The New Daily, 4 February 2018. Quotes from Brett Cozzi originally given to The Australian, from Michelle Cozzi to Seven News, from Dr Adrian Gallagher to the ABC, and from Jackie South to AAP.