Parrot May Have Bad News for Buzzard That Stole Her

This time, they pinched the wrong parrot.

This time, whoever has been plucking exotic birds off the porches of homes in southeast Los Angeles County got Lorita, a crotchety 16-year-old yellow-naped Amazon parrot who talks, sings, swears like Long John Silver and bites the stranger’s hand that feeds her.

And in the ominous words of William Handlin, 21, who has grown up with the feisty bird, “She’s gonna give somebody a hard time.”

Lorita, stolen from Handlin’s Walnut Park front porch Saturday evening, is the sixth and costliest exotic bird to vanish, the latest in a series of thefts that began in late August. According to Sheriff’s Detective Mike Bornman, two pairs of green parrots and a red-crowned Amazon parrot also have disappeared from porches in the Florence area.

“She was like my sister,” mourned Handlin, whose family has had Lorita since he was a child of 5 and she was a hatchling who couldn’t be allowed out of her cage because she chewed up wood--including a new clock.

Lorita talks a blue streak--calling for family members by name--cries like a baby when she wants attention, sings when someone else starts a tune, and when it’s time for Handlin’s mother to get home from work, starts to wail “Mom-eeeeee!”

She is partial to biscuits and gravy and, says Handlin delicately, she swears blisteringly. “She picked it up; I don’t know where she got it.”

The foot-and-a-half-long parrot is valued at $1,500, but “she’s worth a million to me.”

Each evening, Handlin took Lorita from the living room to set her 3-foot-high cage on the porch when the weather was nice. On Saturday, he had started to take her in, but was distracted by a phone call. When he went outside, she was gone.

Her cage was found abandoned in an apartment building down the street, but of Lorita there was not a pinfeather’s trace.

Handlin has called local pet shops with her description: green, with a yellow-marked head, and blue, green and red under her wings.

Lorita is still a lost lady--in fact, none of the missing birds has been found--but, Handlin says hopefully, “She’s a healthy bird. She’ll probably outlive me.”