Moses Lake man reunited with pet

MOSES LAKE — Dave Cerul and his pet cockatiel, Buddy, are together again.

The Moses Lake man appreciates having Buddy back in his life after a two-week absence.

MOSES LAKE — Dave Cerul and his pet cockatiel, Buddy, are together again.

The Moses Lake man appreciates having Buddy back in his life after a two-week absence.

Buddy recently flew the coop after Cerul allowed friend Tara Mackey to remove the bird from his cage and walk outside.

She asked to see the garden behind his Moses Lake home.

But first, Mackey wanted to know if Buddy would fly away.

“I said, ‘let’s find out,’” Cerul said.

It’s because Cerul had previously allowed Buddy outdoors with his cage open, not thinking he would leave this time.

“I figured he knew what side his bread was buttered on and he wasn’t going to fly away because the day was getting hot,” Cerul recalled.

But this time was different.

Cerul and Mackey watched in surprise as Buddy took off, flying straight up and heading north, reaching between 30 to 40 feet in height.

It was “like he was on a mission to find a girlfriend,” Cerul says. “I did everything I could, I thought, to get him back.”

As it turns out, Buddy reached Road 20 SW outside of Moses Lake, which is about 20 miles from Cerul’s downtown home.

Three or four days after his departure, Buddy landed on the head of a field delivery driver refueling a vehicle in the middle of a wheat field. The driver then brought the bird to his employer, Lyle Bair.

Bair’s son and children kept the bird for about a week before Buddy moved in with Terry and Alice Listello, of Ephrata.

The Listellos are former bird owners and are friends of Bair’s.

“They knew we’d had birds before,” Alice said. “It was such a loving bird. Our first bird was kind of mean and wouldn’t let us hold him. We would have loved to have kept him (Buddy) too, but we decided to advertise it.”

Cerul said he saw an ad she placed in the Columbia Basin Herald.

“It’s amazing the bird survived, being that far from Moses Lake,” Alice commented. “A hawk or magpie could have gotten it.”

She told her husband she didn’t think anyone would claim the bird.

Immediately after she made that comment, the phone rang. It was Cerul on the line, wanting to claim Buddy.

“We took him right over to his house that night,” Alice says. “I just can’t imagine the bird flying all that way. We clipped his wings. It was really kind of amazing when you think about it.”

“He (Buddy) was really friendly, that’s why we decided to advertise,” she said. “We thought there was a chance someone was missing a real nice bird.”

“When we took him over to Dave, we felt so good, we could tell the bird was comfortable with him,” Alice explained. “The guy was so nice, we were happy he got back to him.”