Heroic Couple saves 100s of Parrots and 2 Lemurs

Pine Island, Florida, took a massive hit from Hurricane Ian. The overseers of the Malamu Manu Sanctuary, Will Peratino and partner Lauren Stepp, refused to abandon their island compound, choosing instead to save some 275 parrots (and two lemurs) from a horrible fate.

“We would not abandon them. I would never leave them. Never,” Stepp told the AP, as volunteers rounded up dozens of bird coops at the sanctuary. “If they cannot be fed or watered, they will die. And I can’t live with that.”

Hours before the storm hit, the sanctuary owners took the birds into their home to shield them from the elements, where all survived the flooding. “You don’t know what we’ve been through here. We had four feet of water in the house, damned-near drowned,” Peratino said, as he broke into tears.

In the days following the storm, wildlife officials brought over fruit, peanuts and other edibles for the birds, but there was a finite supply that would soon run out because of the downed bridge connecting the mainland and a gasoline shortage on the island.

So on Tuesday, Peratino and Steep and a number of volunteers gathered up the birds and penned them in cages. Macaws, cockatoos, and rare king parrots – there are only two dozen pairs in the US – squawked, whistled, and swore (several reportedly have “mischievous vocabularies”). The birds were then ferried to the mainland and brought, in an air-conditioned trailer, about four hours north to another bird sanctuary.

“Malama” is the Hawaiian word for protect, “manu” means bird. These colorful birds are lucky that the sanctuary owners took that responsibility seriously.