![]() Jungle Gardens’ Miller says Frosty’s vocabulary is not quite so colorful. Today, Charlie resides in an English sanctuary in Reigate, where he is a reportedly grumpy 108 years old. Charlie is alleged to have belonged to Winston Churchill during World War II, from whom he supposedly learned phrases like “F- Hitler!” and “F- the Nazis!” The Churchill estate has denied that the legendary British prime minister ever owned Charlie. The most controversial living geriatric parrot is a blue-gold macaw named Charlie. Born in 1951 and tagged on Midway Atoll, Wisdom made headlines earlier this year when, at age 67, she laid and successfully hatched the latest of her nearly three dozen chicks. The oldest known bird in the wild is a Layson albatross named Wisdom. But according to those sticklers for documentation, Guinness World Records, the oldest certified cockatoo was an 83-year-old named Cookie, who died at Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo in 2016. Fred lives at Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary in Tasmania and is said to be 104 years old. The oldest reported living member of Frosty’s species is a critter named Fred. ![]() When state funding ran out, Frosty landed in Sarasota - 46 years ago. Gardens officials say Frosty was part of a traveling bird-comedy act in the 1960s and, after snagging several appearances on Sullivan, wound up in Folsom Prison as part of an inmate rehabilitation program. If a 1916 obituary in the Sydney Morning Herald is accurate, a sulphur-crested cockatoo named Cocky Bennett was 120 years old when he died in an Australian zoo.įrosty’s birth records are murky, but it is believed the avian show-off was born in captivity in 1936, three years before World War II. Just how many more years of retirement bliss await Frosty is anyone’s guess. What the Frosty Sr., retirement party means is that admission to the park is half price for kids on Saturday and Sunday, and visitor photos with Frosty are free. Someone will dip a brush in some paint and he’ll take the handle in his mouth and paint on paper if he wants to.” “A couple of our birds will race to stack rings or they’ll answer a phone or put coins in a piggy bank - that’s more natural than pedaling. Riding a unicycle is probably not a natural motion for a bird,” says Gardens education director Jordan Miller, 23, who first saw Frosty when she was in grade school. “We’re kind of moving more toward natural behaviors. “He plays you for extra attention, extra affection and extra treats.”īecause of declining eyesight, however, Frosty’s twice-a-day bird-on-wheels performances were retired in August, and are likely to never be repeated. ![]() Having shared the Sullivan stage with the likes of Charlton Heston, Anita Bryant and puppeteer Shari Lewis, Frosty “is smart to the point where knows he’s too smart,” says Gardens bird handler John Santana. That distinction belongs to another cockatoo named Spooky, believed to have been born six months before Frosty.īut Frosty - actually, Frosty Sr., because there’s a younger cockatoo in the park named Frosty - is the star. For the record, despite having celebrated his 82nd birthday in June, Frosty isn’t the oldest bird in the park. This weekend, Sarasota Jungle Gardens is throwing a retirement party for Frosty, a sulphur-crested cockatoo who’s been performing for visitors there since 1972. And unlike Snooty, this guy 1) rode a unicycle on a high wire, 2) rode a scooter, 3) appeared on the old Ed Sullivan Show, and 4) was on hand at Folsom State Prison in California when Johnny Cash famously performed his “Folsom Prison Blues” concert in 1968. SARASOTA - Granted, nothing can take the sting out of the passing of Snooty, the world’s longest-living manatee who died in a drowning accident at the South Florida Museum in Bradenton last year, just one day after celebrating his 69th birthday.īut there’s another popular local geriatric, still alive and kicking, who makes Snooty look like a kid.
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