A pinko that even Texans can love
Humans are strange creatures. We profess horror at acts of criminality, believe fervently in the punishment of offenders and for the most part cleave to the letter of the law, but nothing thrills us more than a prison-escape story.
Dozens, if not hundreds, of action movies and TV shows trade on our delight in cheering on the dashing bandit or banditess who gets out of jail and manages by inventive means to evade recapture.
Pink Floyd, aka flamingo No 492, was a jailbird in Kansas until it flew the coop in 2005. Even though it was labelled a flight risk, somehow the keepers at Sedgwick County Zoo forgot to trim its wings, so it took off in broad daylight and has been on the wing ever since.
No 492 is back in the news this week as yet another sighting of the elusive fugitive was reported.
A few weeks ago, a Texan fishing guide went out on his boat and, despite his lifelong protestations that there are no flamingos in Texas, was confronted by the sight of a rosyfeathered, long-legged bird that could not be anything other than a flamingo. And no, he had not been drinking.
The word flamingo, incidentally, literally means “flame-coloured”. It takes nerve to go about in plumage that loud, like an absconded inmate who forever wears his orange jumpsuit. This is why everyone loves Floyd.
Until the bird startled this unwary fisherman last month, a Floyd sighting had not officially been recorded since 2019.
Experts who have been on the missing bird’s tail for 17 years looked at the photos and confirmed that this was 492, nicknamed Pink Floyd after its great escape.
There have been previous sightings of the bird on the Gulf Coast, prompting much noise on social media, including many a wag tweeting “Pink Floyd is back from the dark side of the moon.”
Floyd is now about 22 years old, having arrived in the US from Tanzania at the age of three. It served time in the Kansas zoo for two years before arranging a getaway.
It is unlikely that Floyd has been able to renew his or her immigration papers while dodging incarceration, so is probably now an illegal avian as well as lost property.
On the day of the breakout, July 4 2005 (Independence Day, naturally), flamingo 492 and its wingman No 347 took to the skies and were spotted heading north. No-one knows what fate befell 347 it is assumed it perished from the cold but 492 had the sense to turn around and head for Texas, where, according to the New York Times, there are “shallow, salty wetlands, high temperatures year-round and ample food sources”.
Floyd was not lonely for long. A year after the escape it was spotted in south Texas with another flamingo, not one from Africa but a member of the Caribbean flock, which bird people think must have been blown off its migration course by a storm. The two migrants struck up a friendship despite their different origins and were seen by fortunate flamingo spotters on scattered occasions for the next seven years.
Quoted by the New York Times, Sedgwick zoo bird curator Scott Newland said: “Even though they’re two different species, they are enough alike that they would have been more than happy to see each other. They’re two lonely birds in kind of a foreign habitat. They’re not supposed to be there, so they have stayed together because there’ sa bond.”
This story of kinship has warmed many a heart. No matter what they say, it is not always true that birds of a feather stick together. Floyd and Floyd’s friend could teach the world a lesson about tolerance.
Floyd’s fan base, particularly in its adopted state of Texas, is massive. Hearing that the bird is still alive and thriving in the wild has given thousands of people a boost.
It would be interesting to know, out of all Floyd’s global followers, how many also support open borders, how many get along well with foreigners and how many welcome refugees into their towns.
As I said, humans are strange creatures.