Parrot leaves behind mystery
Bubba the African grey should be easy to spot - or to hear. Her owner suspected foul play from the beginning.
By ABBIE VANSICKLE
Published September 5, 2005
HOMOSASSA - So far, it seems a perfect crime. No torn screen or broken glass. No evidence save for a single fingerprint. No mess of blood or feathers left behind.
Bubba the African grey parrot met Jim Cheatham 18 years ago. Cheatham, now 57, had answered an advertisement for a parrot in a Michigan newspaper. He thought he'd bought a male parrot, so he named the bird Bubba. Then, Bubba laid an egg. The Cheatham family kept the name anyway.
Now, Bubba's gone. She was reported missing at 8:48 a.m. Aug. 26 from her cage on Cheatham's screened-in porch, the Citrus County Sheriff's Office said. She was last seen at 4 p.m. the day before.
Cheatham was on vacation in Emerald Isle, N.C. The housekeeper found Bubba gone, her food and water bowl empty, the bottom of her cage ajar. She called Cheatham, who immediately suspected foul play. Deputy Craig Fass took a report and dusted for fingerprints. So far, there's been no sign of Bubba.
Bubba's easy to spot, Cheatham said. She's about a foot tall. Her wings are clipped so she can't fly. She wears a slim metal band on her leg.
But the easiest thing to pick out is her voice.
In the morning, it's "Good morning, Cheatham." When at a restaurant, Bubba cautions, "Don't order the fish, don't order the fish." She calls out "Hi, pretty girl" to women. She whistles Dixie. She chirps the theme song for The Andy Griffith Show . She calls people "rednecks." If she falls off her perch, she'll curse.
"She just talks so much. She was like a human," Cheatham said in the living room of his mobile home off Halls River Road in Homosassa. He's wearing a white T-shirt featuring a brightly colored illustration of a parrot on the front. A statue of two entwined cockatoos is on his glass coffee table.
Bubba's empty black wire cage is out on the front steps. Her toys, a couple of bells, are still hanging from the top.
Cheatham said he has felt powerless the past few days. He lives alone in the West Wind Village adult mobile home park. He moved to Florida from Michigan nine years ago. He's on disability. He's divorced, and his three children are grown. He's used to Bubba's voice chiming in at all hours of the day. Now, he turns up the television to soften the silence.
His son, also named Jim Cheatham, lives in Philadelphia. He's really into birds, too. Really into them. He runs a parrot adoption service called Planned Parrothood. He grew up with Bubba, he said. He remembers diving into the water of an alligator preserve to rescue her one time when she flew off his boat. That was before her wings were clipped.
He worked as a chef and took her with him years ago at the Wench's Brew, a seafood place on Ozello Trail. She sat in a cage at the entrance, warning customers not to order the fish.
He has scoured online Web sites to see if any dealers are selling an African grey with a large vocabulary.
He's found nothing. But he, too, thinks Bubba's disappearance is suspicious.
"I have to think it was stolen to sell," he said.
Laurie Mallon, 55, cleans Cheatham's house. She's the one who noticed Bubba was gone. She has the same theory about Bubba.
"It had to have been a bird lover," she said. "They had to have been after the bird. Period."
The Sheriff's Office is investigating, but it doesn't have much to go on. A single fingerprint from Bubba's food bowl is all, and it could be Cheatham's or Mallon's. Cheatham is concerned that someone's trying to resell his Bubba. No one in the park could have taken her, he said. If so, he'd have heard her by now.
Cheatham said the life span of an African grey is 70 years, so Bubba's still a teen in the parrot world.
She could be worth $1,800 to a trader, he said. But to Cheatham, she's priceless.
He wanted to be sure he got his point across, so he handwrote his feelings for Bubba on a legal pad. He never quite got over the surprise of Bubba's sex, so Cheatham still calls her him.
"His name is Bubba and (he) has been a friend, companion and a joy to our entire family. My children were raised with Bubba."
He's offering a reward. He wants to be totally clear just how important this is. Some people don't understand. Mallon said the deputy who came to investigate saw Cheatham's enormous television. If he were the burglar, he said, he'd have taken the television instead.
Anyone with information about Bubba can call the Sheriff's Office at 726-4488.
--Abbie VanSickle can be reached at 860-7312 or vansickle@sptimes.com