JERSEY CITY, NJ — Her name’s Carrot, she’s a parrot, and she disappeared in South Jersey on Feb. 8, breaking a young boy’s heart — only to be found 90 miles away and reunited with her frantic family by a Jersey City rescue organization.
“She was all the way up by New York City,” Carrot’s mom is seen telling her son in a video, after showing him that his bird is back safe.
Carrot, a multicolored Sun Conure parrot, disappeared from her family home in Cherry Hill on Feb. 8, said the Liberty Humane Society, a non-profit in Jersey City.
The family began posting all over social media and taped flyers around, but as winter wore on, they heard not a peep.
More than 40 days later — on March 20 — Liberty Humane got a call.
Sarah Watson, who teaches kindergarten in Hoboken, saw Carrot on her balcony in Jersey City and brought her inside to keep warm.
“Once she landed on our balcony,” Watson said, “my boyfriend was like, ‘Look at this beautiful bird,’ and I [said], ‘That’s a pet!’ And she just let me pick her up with a towel … I put her in our bathroom and we waited for animal control, which came so fast!”
LHS dispatched ART Officer Andy Jacobsen to collect the bird, a LHS spokesperson said.
Watson took to the internet and found Carrot’s family so they could be reunited. Carrot’s mom, Suzi Medes, didn’t tell her young son immediately.
She videotaped him seeing Carrot for the first time back in her cage.
In a personal video she posted online, her son wanders toward the cage. “Is that Carrot?” he asks. “Is that Carrot?”
“She’s home, honey,” Medes says. “She was all the way up by New York City … I went up and got her.”
“Does that mean a free homework pass?” he asks.
His mom doesn’t seem to remember that particular deal, but adds, “Now you don’t have to be sad about birds anymore.”
Medes told Patch on Monday, “Carrot’s adventures have surely grabbed a lot of attention! She is 100 percent a blessing to have, and words can’t express how grateful our family is to have her home again. I am working on a children’s adventure book about what I think Carrot did in the roughly [40] days she was gone.”
Medes has also started a fundraiser for the LHS:
“This story has a great ending,” summed up Irene Borngraeber, the executive director of the LHS. “Just like our [St. Peter’s] Peacocks, all of the stakeholders truly played like a team.”
She added, “The family raised awareness, the good Samaritan called our Animal Response Team, and the community never gave up hope. Because of these actions and the great work of our Animal Response Officers, Carrot is now safe and sound back where she belongs.”
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