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Life

14th Aug 2018

Parrot gets stuck on roof, tells firefighter making rescue attempt to “f**k off”

James Dawson

Jessie had spent three days stuck on the roof of a house in north London but still had some choice words for members of the fire service

A parrot that got stuck on a roof in north London greeted its rescuer with a big old “fuck off” and followed it up with a number of other expletives.

Jessie, a turquoise and yellow Macaw, had been on top of the roof of a house near its home in Edmonton for three days. When neither her owners or the RSPCA were able to get her to come down the Fire Brigade had to be called in.

A member of the service scaled a ladder to reach the bird with the instructions of saying “I love you” to encourage her co-operation, only for Jessie to then hit him with the F-bomb.

London Fire Brigade (LFB) watch manager, Chris Swallow, who was at the scene, said:

“Jessie had been on the same roof for three days and there were concerns that she may be injured which is why she hadn’t come down.

“Our crew manager was the willing volunteer who went up the ladder to try and bring Jessie down. We were told that to bond with the parrot, you have to tell her ‘I love you’, which is exactly what the crew manager did.

“While Jessie responded ‘I love you’ back, we then discovered that she had a bit of a foul mouth and kept swearing, much to our amusement. Jessie also speaks Turkish and Greek, so we tried telling her to ‘come’ in both those languages too.”

Sadly she was having none of it, flying onto another roof and then to a tree. She was then finally retrieved by her owners.

Despite the LFB-led rescue of the bird, the service reminded people that it should contact the RSPCA first over any animal rescue attempts.

A spokesperson said:

“As with this incident, the RSPCA should be contacted in the first instance and we would always urge people to do the same if they see an animal stuck or in distress. If the RSPCA require our assistance, they will call us and we are happy to assist with our specialist equipment.”