A Chesterton man is facing a charge of conversion in connection with the disappearance of an expensive bird from the Petland store on U.S. Highway 30, Hobart Police said.

Det. Dave Grissom of the HPD declined to identify the man until he has been formally charged with conversion, a misdemeanor.

On Jan. 26, Grissom told the Chesterton Tribune today, a Blue Conure, valued at $900, vanished from Petland after an employee showing the bird to a potential customer walked away for a moment. When the employee returned, both the man and the bird were gone.

Or, as Grissom put it, “they’d flown the coop.”

Advertisements were placed in local newspapers, Grissom said, and on Friday he received a telephone tip—“a little birdie blew the whistle”—about a former Hobart resident who had recently moved to Chesterton and may know something about the bird’s whereabouts.

When Grissom visited the suspect at his residence in Chesterton, the man denied knowing anything about the bird. But while standing at the door, Grissom said, he distinctly heard a squawking “Hello!” from somewhere inside the residence. “Is that your wife or is that my bird,” Grissom said that he asked the suspect, having been previously informed that the bird has a vocabulary of exactly one word: “Hello!”

The suspect then invited Grissom into his residence and showed him two small birds which, Grissom said, could hardly have made the explosive squawk which he’d just heard.

Finally, Grissom said, the suspect gave up the bird, which he admitted had attached itself to his shirt at Petland and refused to unattach itself. So the suspect had simply left the store with the bird in tow, Grissom said.

The suspect’s wife “was very unhappy and crying,” Grissom recalled. “She’d grown attached to the bird.”

The Blue Conure was then taken into protective custody, Grissom said, and so popular did the garrulous bird prove at the HPD that another officer offered to buy it from Petland for its $900 value. Petland has accepted the offer and thrown a nice cage into the bargain.

Posted 2/14/2008