Thursday, August 03, 2006

Victim offers $2,000 reward for stolen birds

Burglars targeting the Dimond District made off this week with a pair of exotic birds after ransacking a home while the birds' owner was away for a little more than an hour.

Owner Cindy Moody, an animal lover with a sign on her door asking firefighters to rescue her pets should a fire consume her house, is pleading for the public's help to get her feathered best friends back.

"This is the worst thing someone could have done to me," Moody said. "Burn my house down without my pets in it, I don't care, but don't steal those birds."

She is offering a $2,000 reward for the return of her 18-year-old blue and gold macaw "Mikey" and "Selene," her 8-year-old double yel- low-headed Amazon parrot which is mostly green in color.

The growing problem of residential burglaries in the Dimond District is no secret to residents there. They shoot off several e- mail messages per week warning their neighbors about the latest crime.

According to Oakland's CrimeWatch Web site, burglaries in police beat 22x -- an area northeast of Interstate 580, southwest of Mountain Boulevard between Park Boulevard and Coolidge Avenues -- are up from 19 at this time last year to 43 this year.

According to a letter Lt. Eric Breshears wrote to Dimond District residents last month, residential burglaries are up "to a high rate" in the district this year, even though crime overall is down.

Moody's home was burglarized Tuesday morning at around 10 a.m. as she ran a quick errand. The math professor at City College of San Francisco came home to see a window screen tossed near her garage and a door open.

She found her bedroom ransacked -- all the clothing had been taken out of her drawers, and an emerald earring and necklace set had been stolen.

She wanted to make sure her cats were all inside when she saw her empty bird cages.

"I went into the kitchen and the birds were gone and I was screaming," she said.

Moody has been a bird lover for much of her life. At one point she bred the exotic creatures but recently settled on caring for Mikey and Selene.

"They are incredibly time-consuming," she said. For the most part, exotic birds cling to their handlers as if they were mates. They rarely warm up to strangers but are known to play, cuddle with, and love one owner.


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