My 20-year search for Pepper the parakeet
SOME people spend years searching for a long-lost love.
But for one woman, a third of her life has passed by as she looks in vain for her ex-parakeet.
Hazel Fraser’s quest began when she sold her pet Pepper 20 years ago and soon realised it was the ‘biggest regret’ of her life. She even hired a ‘pet detective’.
Mrs Fraser bought the bird while living in Saudi Arabia in 1978 and brought her back two years later to Edinburgh.
After keeping her for 15 years as a house pet, she sold her to a hotel when the bird became broody and excitable.
Mrs Fraser, 65, an animal groomer, tried to stay in touch with Pepper at the Sweethope House Hotel in Eskbank, Midlothian, but lost contact when she had a leg amputated after a car crash. Several years later, she attempted to contact the hotel to see how Pepper was, but was shocked to learn it had closed down after the owner had a heart attack.
Parakeets only live into their late thirties, so time is fading as Mrs Fraser makes a final attempt to trace and buy back Pepper, now 37. ‘This is my last chance,’ she said. ‘I have spent hundreds on adverts and I even employed a lost-pet specialist to help me.
‘They sold themselves as an “Ace Ventura” kind of thing, but they got nowhere.’
Despite dozens of newspaper advertise- ments and appeals to bird breeders for information, the trail remains cold.
She even traced a woman from Musselburgh, East Lothian, who bought Pepper from the hotel but sold her on and didn’t keep the breeder-buyer’s details.
Mrs Fraser said: ‘I only parted with Pepper because she had started laying eggs. I wish I’d never sent her away. I have spoken to an expert who told me she probably isn’t alive any more. But, I still want to know about her life and where she lived.’