PELHAM, N.H. — A baby macaw, missing since Tuesday night when two men stole him from Seaworld Pet Center in Salem, was found alive yesterday in woods behind Bridge Street, near the scene of a fatal car accident.
Happy, and still not believing she had him back, Joanne Leone, the pet store manager, held the bird in her arms last night.
“It’s a miracle,” she said, while the colorful bird posed and flapped his wings for television cameras and news photographers. “He’s so happy to be home,” Leone said.
Leone said she went into a thickly wooded area behind Hammar & Sons Sign Co. with her Cairn terrier Sophie, who helped lead her to the bird.
“I don’t know how I ever found him. I just followed Sophie,” she said. Leone, who was about to give up, had a feeling the dog was on to something.
“I started calling, ‘Baby, it’s Mama,’” she said.
Leone could hardly believe her ears when she said the bird cried back to her.
“I started running and screaming and crying,” she said. Shortly before 5 p.m., Leone, who was about to give up ever seeing her bird alive again, found the bird perched in a 5-foot tall sapling. Leone said the bird, who is now named Miracle, will need some nursing after surviving 70 hours on his own in the woods.
The bird was dehydrated and suffering from malnourishment and may have suffered an injured right wing, according to Salem police Detective Michael Kelly. Store employees are caring for the bird, he said.
Kelly did not have further information last night about the suspects in the theft. The case remains under investigation, he said.
Pelham police Lt. Gary Fisher said Thursday police are investigating the possibility that the same men who stole the bird in Salem were involved in a crash 20 minutes later in Pelham in which John Sweren, 52, of Marsh Road, was killed.
Sweren was riding his motorcycle in the northbound lane near Charlie’s Auto Village when he was struck by a silver Ford Taurus driven by Jason Connolly, 34, of Lawrence. Sweren’s motorcycle
also struck a second car, a Ford Escort station wagon in the driveway at Charlie’s Auto Village at 72 Bridge St.
Pelham police have not decided yet whether to charge Connolly in the crash, he said.
Police said the description of the car used in the bird theft matches that of the car driven by Connolly.
Leone originally went to Pelham to look for the macaw after receiving an anonymous tip that a man, who ran from an accident on Bridge Street Tuesday, had left the $1,900 exotic bird in a box in the woods. She notified Pelham police, who, on Thursday, helped her with the search as they began investigating a possible connection between the pet store theft and the fatal crash.
Although the first search turned up empty, yesterday afternoon another tip led her to search a different part of the woods. Leone said someone at the Hammar & Sons Sign Co. told her some suspicious men had been out in the woods with a lantern Thursday night but ran away after he shouted at them. She then concentrated in that part of the woods, helped by store employees and two dogs, Sophie and Justice, a German shepherd.
Another store employee, Amy Milnes, of Lawrence, Mass., said she was with Leone when the bird was found.
“He heard our voices, and he was calling us,” she said.
Milnes, who had scratches from tree branches, said they found a box on the ground nearby. Milnes said she pulled the sapling down and Leone was able to reach the bird and take Miracle out of the tree.
“He’s very emaciated,” she said. “But we expected to find him dead.” Milnes said she was in the store when two men stole the bird. Milnes said one of them was asking her questions about bird food, and she went to the food aisle with him.
Merrimack Valley
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Allegra Boverman
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Miracle macaw found
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