Beloved bird 'Cheeto' reunited with Goshen owner after hopping tree-to-tree for 2 days
A pet cockatoo owned by a Goshen man is now back home.
Earlier this week, owner Scott Reinhart had Cheeto on his shoulder.
The bird, startled by a loud noise, flew away, hopping tree-to-tree for two days. Efforts to get Cheeto back only worked when he got hungry!
Life is pretty much back to normal for Scott and his pet cockatoo Cheeto, but on Monday, it was a different story.
Scott, who runs a cleaning service, was in Millersburg on a job.
He stopped at a gas station at 5 o'clock Monday. Cheeto was at his usual spot on his shoulder.
Once outside, the bird jumped on his truck.
“During that time, there was a loud noise that startled him and he flew across the street, probably forty to fifty feet up in to a tree,” said Scott. “I am sure once he got up there -- he normally doesn't fly -- he had no idea how to get down.”
Cheeto sat up there, calling for Scott to come and get him.
Soon after that happened, a nearby neighbor stopped by to see what should could do to help with the situation.
They came up with a plan to throw tennis balls in the direction of Cheeto to see if they could get him to come down,
But that didn't work, and he flew up even higher, now sixty feet off the ground.
Then Scott ran into the Millersburg fire chief, who he'd done work for in the past.
They devised another plan to use a fire hose to spray water in the bird's direction, trying to get him to fly to a lower limb.
Throughout Monday and Tuesday, they tried several other ways to get Cheeto down but were still unsuccessful.
“After three or four attempts by the fireman, we decided to call that off,” said Scott. “Then we called a tree service in and that's when we tried the bucket on three different occasions and didn't have any luck with that either.”
Finally, late Tuesday evening, Scott knew Cheeto was getting hungry. He got out a bag of nuts, shook the bag and ate a couple of them.
“It got his attention and he crawled down the tree. He didn't lay down -- he actually crawled all the way down and hopped on my arm.”
Scott was happy to have Cheeto back, but to prevent this from happening again, he clipped Cheeto's wings.
