Regular flying visits keep Peanut busy

RANI TIMOTI

FREE FLIER: Peanut is a people's birds and sometimes flies onto their shoulders to greet them.

RANI TIMOTI

MY PATCH: Bill the ginger tom is just one of the house cats who knows the rules when it comes to playing with Peanut.

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Peanut the cockatiel flies wherever his whims take him, but he always comes home.

The popular bird flies free around his Parakai, north Auckland, home and zips to neighbours, noshing up on Cornflakes at one, stopping in for toast at another and even spending the odd dinner and sleep over somewhere else.

At the Parakai airfield, the regular visitor has his own flight number.

Although he hops into cars, he knows his flying limits won't go beyond the neighbourhood.

But following his heart led him astray when he went AWOL over the festive season, although he's been known to socialise shoulder to shoulder at parties.

His worried owners Angelika and Ian Voss and others keeping an eye out for him were relieved to get him back after being found by new neighbours down the road after his four-day stint. "It's amazing that in a world of such terrible natural disasters and human acts you can get a group of unrelated people care for such a small creature, though he does have a huge personality," Angelika says.

The last time he went missing was for two weeks in 2009.

"That's when I found out how many people he was visiting – he's got more friends then me," Angelika says.

Even at Ian's work nearby, Parakai Motordrome, he hops on staff and customer's shoulders.

Some children even get Peanut to help them sell their roadside feijoas.

Named after the Charlie Brown comic strip, he has a fetish for feet and socks, along with the colour blue.

Angelika's children Klaus and Monique have tenderly encouraged Peanut to develop his friendly and tame nature since he was found and brought home nine years ago.

He has also tolerated the company of five cats who have lived in the house, trained not to attack him. Neighbours have also trained their pets to behave around him.

- © Fairfax NZ News