A pet parakeet was returned to its owner Wednesday after the lost bird told police its home address near Tokyo.

The male bird had escaped early Sunday morning from its owner’s home in the city of Sagamihara, west of Tokyo, and remained at large before perching on the shoulder of a guest staying in a nearby hotel.

Handed over to local police, the bird did not speak until Tuesday evening, when it blurted out the names of the city and district where its owner’s house is located, said a spokesman for the north Sagamihara police station.

It then produced the home’s block and street number as a trio of astonished police officers listened to the now talkative bird.

The bird’s owner, a 64-year-old woman, once lost another parakeet after it flew away and was determined to prevent a repeat, the spokesman told AFP.

“So the owner decided to teach the address to this parakeet after she bought it at a pet shop two years ago,” he said.

“The bird’s name was found to be Piko-chan as it said, ‘You’re pretty, Piko-chan’.”

Mythology and folktales are full of stories of animals talking, from the spider Anansi (among the Ashanti in Ghana) to Coyote and Raven (in Native American tales). At the end of Book 17 of the ancient Greek poet Homer’s Iliad, Xanthos, the horse of the hero Achilles, speaks. The horse tells Achilles that, like his friend Patroklos, he will be killed by a god, an eerie message that seems all the more powerful because of who, Xanthos, is uttering it. As with Piko-chan to the Sagamihara police, when animals speak, we’re called to listen.
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