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MELBOURNE, Australia – The homing pigeon appeared to have traveled far from Oregon when it showed itself weak and hungry in a backyard on the outskirts of Melbourne.
Someone decided to call him Joe, after President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.
But Australian authorities, fearing the spread of germs from a foreign bird, would not bend the rules: the bird must die.
The story of the bird that allegedly traveled more than eight thousand kilometers to end up on death row in Australia caused a sensation on the Internet.
It started when a home inspector named Kevin Celli-Bird (no parent) said he found Joe on December 26 after he flew into his yard in Officer, a quiet suburb in the southeast of Melbourne, with a group hanging around one leg.
“When he landed he was very weak and in an emaciated state,” Mr. Celli-Bird said in an interview Friday. He fed the pigeon to bring it back to health.
Driven by curiosity about his origins, he searched online for the numbers on the bird’s leg band. He said they matched those of a bird from a race of Oregon pigeons that started on October 29. He discovered that a male bird was missing.
Mr Celli-Bird said he made inquiries with the American Pigeon Racing Union, who said the bird was registered with someone in Alabama. With this information in hand, he and a few friends thought it made sense to name the pigeon after a notable American figure.
“We were sitting, laughing, throwing names,” he says. “We thought, ‘Well, Joe is the new president; we will give it that name. ”
They thought of ‘Donald,’ Mr Celli-Bird said, but ‘we thought maybe it wasn’t politically correct with what’s going on.’
International media have tracked down the strange story of a bird named Joe, and the internet has marveled at its apparent journey. Authorities said they believed he was most likely hitchhiking on a freighter.
Brad Turner, secretary of the Australian National Pigeon Association, told The Associated Press he had heard of cases of Chinese carrier pigeons reaching the west coast of Australia aboard freighters, a relatively shorter trip.
Mr Celli-Bird thought it was rather amusing, but the Australian authorities had a different point of view. The Department of Agriculture, Water and Environment said Joe “posed a direct biosecurity risk to Australian birds and our poultry industry”. He intended to euthanize her, local media reported Thursday.
Australia has notoriously strict biosecurity laws. In 2015, Barnaby Joyce, then Minister of Agriculture, threatened to euthanize actor Johnny Depp’s two Yorkshire terriers, Pistol and Boo, because they had not been declared to customs upon arrival in Queensland in board a private jet. Fortunately, arrangements have been made for the two dogs to be returned to the United States. Amber Heard, then wife of Mr Depp, later pleaded guilty in a Queensland court to providing false information on her passenger card after she and the dogs landed on the Gold Coast to visit the actor. The couple apologized.
Acting Prime Minister Michael McCormack showed no mercy earlier on Friday over the pigeon affair during a press conference, saying, “If Joe has come in a way that hasn’t followed strict biosecurity measures, then bad luck, Joe. Either go home or face the consequences. “
Faced with the prospect of Joe’s disappearance, Mr. Celli-Bird had doubts about the name he had given the bird. “Last night I thought maybe we should have called him Donald,” he said. “Perhaps we could have obtained a presidential pardon or diplomatic immunity.”
But on Friday morning, information suddenly emerged that seemed to give the bird a break: Joe may not be an American pigeon after all.
A local pigeon rescue group said on Facebook that it had seen many local birds wearing the same type of band found on Joe’s leg. “We believe he is not an American pigeon at all – rather an Australian pigeon wearing an imitation American ring that anyone could buy on eBay,” the organization said.
A spokeswoman for the American Racing Pigeon Union also said that Joe’s group was likely a fake and was likely an Australian pigeon, according to the Associated Press.
The Agriculture Department said it was “investigating the authenticity of the US identification tag.”
Mr Celli-Bird said he wanted to know the true origins of the bird “for the peace of mind of all”. He stressed that he had no intention of deceiving anyone.
Faced with mounting evidence, Friday evening, the Department of Agriculture announced in a statement that it had “concluded that Joe the Pigeon was most likely Australian”. The ministry said it was “convinced that the bird’s leg tape was a fraudulent copy of a legitimate leg tape.”
As such, he was free to continue living in Mr. Celli-Bird’s yard.
It is also not known whether the bird will keep its new name and if it will finally return home. Earlier on Friday, Mr Celli-Bird said: “If he chooses to go, he can; if it stays, we’ll just keep feeding it.
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