Polly just needed someone who understood

EVERETT — Polly eventually came down, but it took a handful of granola and someone who could speak her language.

The parrot escaped from her home in downtown Everett earlier this week. On Wednesday morning, she was perched in the trees outside the Wall Street Building, greeting passersby.

Kelly Murphy-Stevens, a computer technician for the city, always starts his work day around 8 a.m.

“There were several people standing outside of our building by the trees,” he said. “I walked over there and I heard a bird call, ‘Hello.’ It literally said, ‘Hi.’ ”

Murphy-Stevens made some noises and the parrot turned her head. She started moving toward him but then returned to her perch, about four stories up.

Murphy-Stevens went inside to start work and made sure someone had called the animal shelter. The parrot already had been reported missing, and the owner had been alerted.

Later that morning, Murphy-Stevens had a work errand to run. First he checked on the bird. The owner was outside with a cat crate. Someone else had bird feed. They were trying to persuade the parrot to come down.

Murphy-Stevens had an idea. His parents got their parrot, Bingo, in the 1980s. After his parents died, his brother took in Bingo, now in his 20s.

Bingo has a habit of always saying “Bad, bad boy, Bingo,” Murphy-Stevens said.

“He would say that all the time because he would do naughty things,” he said. “My mom taught him ‘Here kitty, kitty,’ three different meows and she taught him to crow like a rooster. They would sit there and talk to him for hours.”

The parrot in the tree on Wednesday looked just like Bingo.

“My parents had that exact parrot for years and I would talk to it and listen to it and mimic its weird bird noises,” he said. “I started doing that to their parrot and it started looking at me.”

He got some granola and held it up in the air. The bird started moving lower and lower, until the spindly branches could no longer hold its weight. It then flew into a nearby alley and landed “huffing and puffing on the recycle bin.”

Murphy-Stevens remembers thinking, “Is she gonna bite me or not? My family parrot would have bit. She just climbed on my wrist, normal and nice. I took a piece of granola and she just snapped it out of my hand. She was hungry.”

While the parrot’s mouth was full, he tucked her into the owner’s crate.

“It was such a relief,” he said. “Typically parrots die when they get out. They get killed by another bird or a car or they starve.”

He went back to his work day. At lunchtime, his team was sharing pizza to celebrate some employee milestones, including his own one-year anniversary at the city.

He got a call. The parrot’s owner was in the lobby. The man, who appeared to be in his 20s, said he works as a chef. The man said he’d been a wreck over the bird’s disappearance and he wanted to thank whoever captured her.

The man offered Murphy-Stevens money and to cook him some meals, but Murphy-Stevens declined.

Murphy-Stevens used to own a rescue dog named O’Reilly who liked to run away. He remembers a stranger who found O’Reilly one time and made sure the dog got home safe.

After the day’s events on Wednesday, Murphy-Stevens got to thinking about old Bingo. He called his brother’s wife, who sent him a picture of the bird via Facebook.

Wednesday’s happy ending is a reminder, he said, about the importance of calling the animal shelter. That applies to people with a missing pet and people who find pets on the loose.

Rikki King: 425-339-3449; rking@heraldnet.com.