Your Name is Piko-Chan

 The moral of this good news story out of Tokyo is that if you love your pet and value what it means to you, you will take care that your emotional investment is secure. 

With a dog you can always get a tag imprinted with its name, your name and address and telephone number on it, to affix to its collar.  Alternately, you can have a mico-chip implanted which any veterinarian clinic will be able to identify to enable you to be reunited with a pet that has gone astray.

And with a cat, you can of course opt to use an identifying tag and/or a micro-chip as well, or trust that the cat will eventually find its way back home. 

A bird?  Well, it depends.  If it's a parrot, a parakeet or any of the kinds of avian geniuses that can be taught to mimic a human voice and utter words that can be identified by any human listener, there's your clue to success.

A 65-year-old woman once lost a parakeet and that upset her greatly.  When she acquired another parakeet two years ago she determined to teach it to look after itself. 

The bird escaped her home in the city of Sagamihara, west of Tokyo.  Eventually it landed on the shoulder of a guest who happened to be staying at a hotel nearby her home.  The parakeet was handed over to police.  Still in their possession, two days later it suddenly spoke the name of the city and district where its owner's house is located.

But it went beyond even that and produced the home's block and street number.  And it also spoke its name, Piko-chan.  The bird was restored to its grateful owner. 

That could be called an ounce of prevention.  Which saved this woman from a whole lot of grief at yet another loss.