Israel’s ‘Iron Parrot’ Awaits Reunion With Owner

Jerusalem, 25 October, 2023 (TPS) -- The rescue workers of Magen David Adom’s Ashdod station refer to their new feathered friend as the Iron Parrot.

In the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack Gaza-area communities, the MDA crew was sent to search for survivors and locate bodies in the rubble of Kibbutz Kfar Aza. The kibbutz is three km from the Gaza Strip. At least 70 of the kibbutz’s 400 residents were massacred.

Moving methodically from one destroyed house to the next, the crew came upon an unlikely scene: A gray, green and red parrot locked in a cage, frightened, its owner nowhere to be found.

After making some inquiries, the MDA crew learned that its owner had been called up for reserve duty, unaware of the bird’s fate.

Without hesitation, the team evacuated the parrot to safety, carefully placing it in an ambulance and transporting it to the MDA station in Ashdod.

“When the ambulance arrived at the station in Ashdod, I prepared for the worst, because even days after the serious incident, injured and dead bodies continued to arrive,” said Nahum David, MDA’s deputy director of the Lachish region. “But this time a cage was pulled out of the car with a magnificent but frightened and exhausted parrot in it.”

What did David do?

“In emergency situations, no questions are asked. I brought the parrot into the station, we quickly fed him and watered him because according to our calculations, he was alone for three days and must have had some difficult moments,” David explained.

At first, the parrot remained anxious, but after several days of love and attention from the MDA staff, the bird slowly came back to himself.

The parrot’s owner has been informed. And until he finishes his reserve duty, the Iron Parrot continues to be doted on by his new MDA friends.