You may have noticed that I’ve been retweeting for a Riki Rachtman quite a bit lately. In case you haven’t, Riki’s African Grey Parrot named Voodoo, which he’s had for about 17 years if I read correctly, got out of Riki’s home last weekend and is still missing. Obviously, when you’ve had a pet for that long, for it to suddenly disappear like that is rather stressful and brings you down to a level that people who don’t have pets can never understand.
Now, I live NOWHERE near LA or the Hollywood Hills. In fact, I’m on the other side of the country, so I clearly I can’t help him find the bird in a more direct way, but I would surely get out there and help him out in the search if I was out there. So, the best I can do at this point is tweet and retweet for him and hope that it will help out. I’ve actually gotten to the point where I’m checking my twitter feeds to see what the status is, hoping for the tweet that will read “Voodoo’s back” with a nice story to go along with it.
I’m sure some may ask why I’m so drawn to this. Well, a few years ago, my dog, Gouda, who will be 10 in November, was unintentionally let out of the back yard and was missing for two days. I had organized a birthday party for my wife at restaurant in Atlanta so we had all met that afternoon in the summer to celebrate. What I didn’t know was that our lawn guys, who always called the day before they would show up, came by to cut, opened the gate and unleashed the dogs of non-aggression. Seriously, a Beagle is hardly a threat and Gouda, a Rottweiler, still thinks he’s a puppy. No note…no call, no apologies. When I came home, Kelsy, our Beagle was out front..gate was shut like nothing happened. Now, Kelsy has been known to get out rather frequently and truth be told, if she has a chance to get out and go run the streets, she will. Once she’s out..forget it..but she always comes back But since it was such a regularity for us to deal with, I didn’t think much of it until it was time to feed them and I realized Gouda wasn’t there.
I did what everyone does. Printed up signs for the neighborhood…drove around the area calling for him..asking people if they’d seen him. And since he is a rottie, I’ve got even more reasons to be concerned not knowing how he would respond to strangers, strange dogs, or how others would respond to him. I had terrible thoughts about him being picked up and used as bait dog for some dog fighting ring (it happens here, as I understand) or being on the wrong end of 12 ga. wielded by an over-protective dad.
The following Monday, I contacted my vet as well as the local animal control and humane society to let them know he was missing. If a dog has a rabies tag, it usually has the name and number of the vet it came from..you call them, give them the tag number and they can track down the owners. I figured that if someone wasn’t scared, they might check the tags. I did this all before heading to work. Fortunately, that afternoon, I got a call from my daughter, who said “How would you like to go to the animal control office tomorrow morning and pick up your puppy?”. Which I did…$35 later, he was back home.
I feel for anyone who’s lost a pet…regardless of winged or pawed. It’s not an easy thing to deal with….missing children get the response of many volunteers who help in the search. Animals don’t get that response. I’m not saying one is any more important than the other, but the pain is the same.
That being said:
Riki Rachtman’s African Grey Parrot is missing. It answers to the name VOODOO and was last seen in the Hollywood Hills.
