SYDNEY, Oct 23 – A white cockatoo named Mickey, who had been living inside a Coles supermarket here for four weeks, has been successfully captured by wildlife services.
Bird rescue activist group Feathered Friends said the bird will be released after being trapped in Macarthur Square — surviving merely on brioche and water.
“I assure you Mickey won't go back into the centre. This boy was so relieved to see blue sky's.
“Four weeks trapped in a shopping centre is enough to turn him away,” said the group on Facebook.
The group’s director, Ravi Wasan, had earlier introduced another cockatoo named Old Lady Doris into the supermarket to coax Mickey into coming down.
“He’s really scared because there’s been so many attempts – people trying to catch him,” Wasan was quoted saying in The Guardian, describing the difficulty of the situation.
The rescue team had faced challenges as Mickey had become wary of humans after several failed attempts to capture him.
Wildlife services had placed traps, but the abundance of food in the store made their efforts difficult.
Wildlife rescuers had spent days trying to free the bird, which had become a familiar sight to shoppers in the area.
New South Wales Premier Chris Minns had previously assured the public that no harm would come to Mickey and denied online rumours of a potential “kill order.”
