A Tale Of Too Many Cockatiels

By Dottie Evans

In the beginning, there was one cockatiel. He belonged to the Naglieri family of Brushy Hill Road and his name was Polly.

Today, this cockatiel’s name is still Polly and the Naglieris still have him –– but for a brief moment they thought they didn’t have him. And that is where our story begins.

Nick Naglieri was outside at 8 pm on Wednesday, May 19, chatting with his friend Milo DeRosa while cooking steaks on the grill. He happened to look up and saw the outline of a cockatiel perched on the roof of his Brushy Hill Road home.

[His wife, JoAnn Naglieri, who came into The Bee editorial office the next day and described the whole thing to us, tells what happens next.]

“I was upstairs. My husband yelled at me from outside that Polly had gotten out and was on the roof. So I ran downstairs through the breakfast room and on the way to the porch I noticed our Polly was sitting right where he was supposed to be –– in his cage.”

So Mrs Naglieri yelled back to Mr Naglieri, “That’s not Polly! It’s got to be some other cockatiel!”

Determined to catch what they since refer to as the “new bird,” Nick Naglieri began patting his shoulder the way he always did to get Polly to come perch. The new bird circled lower and lower and then landed right where it was supposed to –– on his left shoulder.

“Then Nick walked very, very, slowly and steadily into the house with the cockatiel, and he put it on the top of Polly’s cage where it spent the night. It was exhausted and I was afraid it wouldn’t live through the night. But the next day it was eating and the two birds seemed quite happy together.”

Now the Naglieris had one cockatiel of their own and one to spare.

 

You might want to take a break here. Go outside, or have a drink of water. Come back refreshed and ready for the next installment.

The focus shifts to another Newtown family living only three miles (as the cockatiel, er, crow flies) from the Naglieris, off Flat Swamp Road.

Their name is Coffey and they, too, had a pet cockatiel but they no longer have it –– or at least they don’t think they do. But we are getting ahead of our story.

The Coffeys’ cockatiel was named (Gregory) Peck and he escaped on Saturday, May 15, out their Dutch door, according to Judith Coffey who was away from the house at the time. Being a mother of five, she has got a pretty good idea of how events at home might have unfolded.

“It’s always busy around our house, and with five kids, the neighbors are always over. The 8-year-old is sure he put Peck back in his cage and he says he closed the cage door tight. But we’ve got this Dutch door and the upper portion is usually open and these things can happen,” Mrs Coffey said.

Hoping someone would find Peck, the Coffeys made signs asking people to be on the lookout for a stray cockatiel. They put their signs up along Dodgingtown Road between Newtown and Bethel and they waited anxiously for a phone call.

Now things begin to get complicated. It helps to understand that all cockatiels basically look alike except for subtle differences in appearance and temperament that only their owners might notice.

On that very same Saturday that Peck escaped, a man in Monroe (whose name is not important to this story) happened to find a strange cockatiel in his back yard.

Actually, it was a normal cockatiel –– not strange at all –– only strange because it wasn’t his cockatiel. Which it couldn’t have been because this man had never owned a cockatiel in the first place.

Though he lived in Monroe, he worked in Newtown and a couple of days later, he saw one of the Coffeys’ signs posted on a telephone pole along Route 302. He immediately phoned them to say he’d found their cockatiel and, feeling very excited and relieved, the Coffeys rushed over to Monroe to retrieve their lost Peck.

After bringing it home, Mrs Coffey began to have serious doubts.

“I never did feel quite right about him. I don’t think he’s our Peck. His head is too yellow, and while he’s a very nice bird, he’s not quite as affectionate as Peck was.”

Her 10-year-old son is convinced it is Peck. Her husband takes a more philosophical approach.

“It’s a miracle any way you look at it. If this is Peck, it’s a miracle he’s back. If it isn’t Peck, it’s a miracle because another bird just like him has just taken his place.”

“We’re just biding our time here to see what happens,” said Mrs Coffey.

“The jury is still out on this bird.”

 

OK, have you got the picture so far? There is one family with two cockatiels, and one family with one cockatiel that probably is not theirs. So far, the two families do not know anything about each other. Nor do they know anything about each other’s cockatiels.

Enter Janis Gibson, Bee copyeditor, who knew about the Naglieris’ extra cockatiel because she was there when JoAnn Naglieri came into the newspaper office to tell all about it.

Janis was driving to work a couple days later and coming along Route 302, she just happened to see the Coffeys’ sign on a telephone pole advertising their lost cockatiel Peck. She took down the number, and The Bee office called the Coffeys to tell them their lost bird might be the one that had flown into the Naglieris’ backyard.

“That’s very interesting,” said Mrs Coffey rather guardedly over the phone, “since we’ve already got a bird sitting in a cage right now that we had thought would be Peck.”

Needless to say, the Coffeys went right over to the Naglieris thinking that although the Monroe cockatiel was definitely not Peck, the Naglieris’ spare cockatiel might just be their bird.

But it was not to be.

“His head is too flat, his eyes are too far apart, and he has a nasty disposition –– very peckish and mean. Not at all like our sweet bird,” said Mrs Coffey.

Nevertheless, the Coffeys took the Monroe cockatiel home with them because, as Mrs Coffey said, “If you’re trying to find the owner of one lost cockatiel you might as well be trying to find another owner of another lost cockatiel.”

They even named this second bird Simon after Simon Cowell, the nasty but brutally honest judge on American Idol.

 

If you have been keeping track, the Naglieris are back to one cockatiel now –– definitely their Polly who was never lost in the first place. And the Coffey family has two cockatiels, neither of which is their adored Peck.

For the time being, Judith Coffey has decided to keep the two cockatiels that are not Peck and advertise in Monroe, Trumbull, and Redding in the hopes of finding their true owners.

“This will come out OK somehow,” she said with confidence.

“We’re sure some person out there is devastated by the loss of either one of these birds.”

But certain questions remain to be answered. Whatever happened to Peck? And how could there be so many cockatiels out there flying loose in Greater Fairfield County whose owners are not claiming them?

“People don’t clip their wings like they should. We meant to clip Peck’s and, unfortunately, we never got around to it,” said Mrs Coffey.

So it appears that while all stories have a beginning, some stories like this one don’t have an end, and maybe it’s just as well.

In all good conscience, we must ask anyone who has lost a cockatiel or found a cockatiel to call The Bee at 426-3141. But to tell the truth, we would almost rather not know.