The devastated family has papered the neighborhood with fliers, checked out numerous tips, scanned online sales and reported Tex missing to the police and the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. A PSPCA spokeswoman said that fliers with Tex's picture and description have been posted with its Animal Care and Control Team.
Sympathizers also have posted Tex's picture and description on the Web.
Yet the family has received no word of the bird, Jackie Miller said yesterday.
"A lot of people think [exotic] birds are worth thousands and thousands of dollars," said Kathie Hahn, of Bird Paradise, an exotic-bird dealer in Burlington, N.J.
Not so in this case, because of Tex's age, she said. In a store, he would be worth several hundred dollars, she estimated.
"But you can't put a price on love," Hahn said. "Losing a bird is like losing a child."
To the Millers, Tex is priceless, and his talents many. Jackie Miller, whose parents bought Tex when she was a girl, says that Tex is particularly close to her children and yells, "No," when son Jake heads off to school; says, "Come in," when somebody knocks at the door; and screams, "What up? What up?"
Managers at two local pet stores said that the burglars would have a hard time selling Tex at most pet shops.
"You can tell - when somebody comes in and says, 'What's this bird worth?' " - that sets off alarm bells, said Scott Friedman, a manager at World Wide Aquarium, on Frankford Avenue.
A manager at a PetSmart in the Northeast said that the store doesn't buy pets from the public.
Richard Farinato, of the Humane Society of the United States, said of Tex:
"I suspect that it's right in a local pet shop. There's really no way to identify where a bird comes from, if somebody walks into a pet shop and says, 'I want to sell this bird,' " Farinato said.
