Cawing all cars!
Burglars reportedly stole half a dozen birds valued at a total of almost $9,000 from a California pet shop early Friday — part of what the store’s owner believes to be a string of connected exotic bird heists to plague the area in recent weeks.
The thieves smashed open the front window of Birds-N-Paradise in Menifee, CA, and slipped inside around 2 a.m. Friday, proprietor Erik Schreiner told The Press-Enterprise.
The crooks stacked up multiple 6-foot-tall cages in an apparent effort to obscure the view of a security camera, then started grabbing the exotic birds from the store’s boarding rooms, Schreiner said.
Their winged windfall included three Patagonian conures, valued at $950 each; a caique parrot worth $1,400; a $2,200 rose-breasted cockatoo; and a yellow nape Amazon parrot valued at $2,500.
Schreiner was unable to determine from the grainy surveillance footage exactly how many burglars were involved, but said they looked to be experienced.
“They were in and out in two minutes,” he said.
That experience could be because the birdnappers have had practice.
Schreiner told The Press-Enterprise that he suspects the same break-in artists may be behind a slew of recent SoCal bird heists.
On Feb. 21, five parrots — three double yellow headed Amazons, and two African greys — worth a cumulative $10,000 were reported stolen from a store in nearby Cypress, CA.
Two more African greys were swiped from a Redlands pet shop on March 9, The Press-Enterprise reported.
“It’s definitely a ring,” said Fran Sturms, owner of the Cypress store. “It’s definitely a group that knows how to break in and get out really fast. And they’re not taking little birds. They’re only after the more expensive ones.”
The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department said they were investigating the possibility that the thefts are linked, but had yet to make a formal connection.