Top-Dollar Bird : Man Searching for Lost Cockatoo Can’t Meet Bid of $3,000

Some came in search of a bird bargain. Luis DePalma was after his beloved Arturo.

Anxiously clutching photographs of himself with Arturo, DePalma, 43, wandered through the crowd of 30 or so gathered in Chatsworth on Thursday for the auction of a rare umbrella cockatoo at the West Valley Animal Care and Control Center.

The bird in question has had a dramatic existence--in its three or four years of life, the creature has been homeless, kidnaped and logged as evidence. Minutes after it was sold Thursday, feathers flew in a custody dispute between DePalma and the Simi Valley woman whose high bid of $3,000 took the bird.

Only the bird appears to know where it came from, and this cockatoo doesn’t talk. But its recent past is chronicled in the folders of police investigators, attorneys and animal control officers.

In July, 1990, Jim Lane, 37, found “this big white bird” looking dazed and bedraggled in the street outside his Hancock Park home. It was picked up the next morning by animal control officer Margaret Nieman, 35.

Instead of taking the sick bird to a veterinarian for treatment, Nieman kept it at her Tujunga home, Deputy City Atty. Phyllis Henderson said.

Nieman later pleaded no contest to misappropriating city property--the cockatoo, which was impounded as evidence. Nieman was fined and placed on probation, Henderson said. Nieman no longer works for the department, animal regulation officials said.

The cockatoo, which can live as long as a human, was shuffled from shelters to foster homes and veterinarians as paperwork authorizing its release slowly moved through the courts. DePalma insisted that the cockatoo was Arturo, the bird stolen last May from his mid-Wilshire home.

But animal control officials said that even if he did own the bird, it was too late. DePalma should have come forward sooner. The bird would be auctioned off as advertised. DePalma was intent on winning.

The minimum bid was $1, but the first offer shot straight to $150. DePalma countered immediately with $250. Someone bid $300.

“$350,” DePalma said.

Several in the crowd groaned or whistled quietly. Too high. Some left. Others lingered to see how high the bidding would go.

“$700,” Marie Carpenter snapped, launching a bidding war.

“$725,” DePalma shot back.

“$750.”

The bids climbed until Carpenter hit $3,000 and DePalma dropped out. He could go no higher than $2,800, he said, and it was obvious Carpenter would pay any price.

The money--two to four times the bird’s market value, animal regulation officials estimated--will go into the city’s general fund.

Carpenter, who has a virtual zoo at her Simi Valley home, said she did not mind paying the price because she wanted the bird to have a good home to compensate for its life so far.

“Anything worthwhile is not cheap,” she said.

But even as Carpenter carted off her purchase, DePalma persisted. Outside the shelter, he pointed to a previously unnoticed metal band on the bird’s leg and demanded that its numbers be inspected. Back inside went the agitated bird, climbing the walls of its cage.

Behind closed doors, with DePalma and Carpenter hovering, Animal Regulation Lt. Nancy Kaump compared the numbers on the bird’s leg band with those on DePalma’s receipt. DePalma trembled and was near tears, Carpenter said, when she told him that if the numbers matched, he could take the bird.

No match. The bird was Carpenter’s.

In consideration of DePalma’s devotion, though, Carpenter considered naming the bird Arturo.

DePalma left the shelter quietly through a back door, resuming his search.