Pretty Bird Floyd

No, this is not an April Fool's Joke -Pink Floyd is back!  Not the classic band (because they never left), but Pink Floyd the Tanzania-born greater flamingo, who for the past 17 years has been on the loose!  The flamingo escaped from Wichita's Sedgwick County Zoo in 2005 after missing a feather trim and flew the coop.  Over the past decade-and-a-half, the wily bird has been spotted up and down the length of the central United States, from Wisconsin in the north to Louisiana in the south.  This week, he was spotted in south Texas.

Flamingos are among the longest-lived of birds, so who knows how much longer Floyd sightings will be gracing the heartland.  They are also one of the most social of birds, living in huge colonies in the wild.  It really is too bad that he can't make his way a little further to the east, where he might have a chance of meeting the wild American flamingos which inhabit south Florida... or drop in at another zoo with flamingos.   Someday he'll likely just disappear, unless he is recaptured, which does seem unlikely at this point, after so many years.

Until then, I imagine Wichita bird keepers following the news and muttering under their breath, "How I wish, how I wish you were here..."