Tango the whiteface cockatiel encountered some misadventure after absconding from his owner’s home on Thanksgiving Day but ended up in the care of a sympathetic stranger.
The 10-month-old bird slipped out of a sliding glass door in his Lombard home on Thanksgiving. Tango’s owner, Frank Alonso, 24, used the faint sound of Tango’s whistle to find him on top of an evergreen tree.
Alonso’s family taped some of his favorite food onto a net in the hope that it would lure him out of the tree, but the effort was thwarted when a hawk scared him away.
“It just seemed like it emerged out of the sky,” Alonso said.
Though he feared Tango was gone for good, Alonso put up lost-bird fliers around his neighborhood.
The next day, Julie Bowman, 50, found Tango cold and motionless at a Lombard hotel, where she was staying for a conference. Bowman, who lost her cockatiel three years ago, nursed him back to health.
Another guest at the hotel saw one of the fliers, contacted Alonso and told him Tango was with Bowman.
On Sunday, the family recovered Tango, who was back to his old tricks, like playing with his skateboard.
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