– AP
275 exotic parrots are now on their way to a new wildlife sanctuary after their heroic caretaker pulled all of them up into his stilted house like Noah’s Ark to ride out Hurricane Ian.
There’s no question in Will Peratino’s mind that if he had not done so, the waves which crested his 5-foot high fencing around Malama Manu Sanctuary on Pine Island would have drowned all of them.
After the devastation, a full-scale volunteer effort transported all 275 parrots by boat through flooded canals to solid ground where they will be taken to another wildlife sanctuary.
The efforts were led by Project Dynamo , a volunteer rescue operation from Tampa that heard about Peratino’s plight. They put together a team and four boats to put all the parrots into cat-sized pet carriers and bring them off the ravaged Pine Island.
One of the volunteers came from the new sanctuary, who said they are likely to take the birds in for 6 months to a year.
“It’s been a long week,” Peratino said once all his birds were safely on their way. “This represents us being able to accomplish what we wanted to do which was to save all these birds. We heard other people just abandoned their pets, and there’s now way we could do that.”
While it seems a lot of work for a crazy parrot man, the birds are not his personal collection of exotics. Many of them are breeding pairs that safeguard populations of endangered animals in the wild from becoming totally extinct.
It’s as close to a modern reproduction of the story of Noah as one can find.
WATCH some of the rescue below from AP
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