 Hello my fellow sniffers. My name is Marlene McCoy and this is Picasso and I kind of have with me a special guest star but if I show her to you it's going to make the video really hard but I'm going to try to do it. Hold on. This is Jersey. She just wants to sit here and be cuddled so I interrupted that. She's such a good little bird down here but I don't know why. She never wants to be in the video. She gets so restless and if I let her get restless without sitting here and petting her then Picasso is for sure going to leave because he's been chasing her everywhere. But all they really do is walk around this floor and he follows behind her. It's the cutest little thing, right Jersey? Today's story is going to be about none other than Hurricane Harvey because it's been mass destruction for so many people I know. Also, I want to tell you about what happened to Ty, my lesser sulfur-crested cockatoo and how he took the hurricane. So many of you are asking me this on Parrot Station under other videos. Even though I always feel like I answer you, I think there's so many different spots that I communicate with you guys so sometimes some of you miss it. I thought it would be a good idea to tell you the story of Hurricane Harvey and Ty through my eyes and what it felt like being here in California watching all of this live while my family is struggling in Texas. For those of you who have been following my channel and my story and my posts on Parrot Station, you know that my brother lives in Texas with his girlfriend, Cio. He calls Cio his wife. I don't know if they went and got married one day, but he always refers to her as his wife. They've been together a very long time, something like nine years now. For sure I'd love to go to a wedding one day, hint, hint. My parents also live in Houston, Texas. My dad lives there with my mom, although my mom is not in Houston, Texas right now, but that is where their home base is and my dad is in fact in Texas and was there for the entire hurricane. So here's how things work in my family. My brother and Cio include Ty and absolutely everything. They just recently moved out and got their own place. They were living with my parents for a while. And since my parents weren't there, it was kind of like they were living alone because my parents, as you guys know, are often in Ireland or often here. Finally, they moved out, moved their furniture over there. Cio set it up beautiful. On Friday night, I was at Tracy's house and I get a text from my brother saying, I'm on Periscope. My brother is a huge fan of Periscope, although I don't know if Periscope completely took off. He believes that there's so much untapped potential in Periscope. So when he goes live, I always follow him and want to see what he's doing. I'm also his biggest fan and supporter. He's a complete comedian. He's done stand up over here in Los Angeles. And I just love to watch him and see what he's going to do next. So I logged on and he had a new name. So I'm looking for it, like trying really hard. His name was Nightcrawler. So I'm like Nightcrawler. OK, there are six Nightcrawlers. I literally befriended them all until I found my brother online. So if any of you Periscopers are named Nightcrawler. I'm your new fan. Finally, I find him. I see he's kind of driving the town. He's driving through Houston. It's late at night. It seems like he's doing reporting, honestly, driving down the streets, reporting if there's any debris or damage, engaging kind of like a weatherman. How much damage he thinks there's going to be, which I find kind of interesting and people logging on or interested in it. I watch more of his Periscope and that's really it. The next day is Saturday and all of the rain starts. And I want to call my brother and see how things are. But the studio that I'm filming at has no reception at all. Not only that, but it seems like they block every single app except for Facebook and Instagram because I don't know if you guys know, but that is a thing. You can do that. So basically you can hashtag where you are, but you really don't have much communication to the outside world. Or at least I didn't. So I really want to know what's going on. And I'm trying to talk to my brother, but I have absolutely no access. Later that night, I come home and I see that CEO has logged on to Periscope and she's broadcasting. And I guess the reason she's broadcasting is because they ordered the McGregor Mayweather fight on pay-per-view and my brother was out driving and he wanted to be able to see it because he wasn't sure if he could get home. So she's basically periscoping the fight. So I log on and I'm like, oh, this is kind of cool. Like, I didn't really have a way to watch the fight. My family is very Irish, so they're very into McGregor. Next thing you know, my brother goes on Periscope again. All the rain has started. So much rain is going on. He's got the phone hooked up to the dash and I see all this rain. And then he gets out and reports. He's like looking at the bayou. Cops are behind him at certain times. So he gets out and then he films it and then he has to get back in. But the cop can't reach him. So this has happened a few times. It takes me like a minute. And then I realize, oh, my God, Nightcrawler, like he's reporting. I'm like, hey, Danny, have you seen the movie Nightcrawler? He's like, of course. Funny enough, I went to school to be the broadcaster, but my brother, no matter what happens, every disaster, he's out reporting to the world. And even when he goes to a different country, it's like he reports, like he brings back these amazing photos and he loves to just report what things really look like in places. So I found all this very interesting. Next thing you know, my brother is walking through five feet of water in some places and two feet of water in other places. The CO is logged on to and they're giving each other advice. Like this is how he's communicating. I'm watching this whole thing and I'm like, oh my God, at least it's only 15 minute walk for him to get home from what he's saying. He gets to his house. By the way, this is in the middle of the night. His house is fine and everything is okay. And the reason, by the way, that he's walking home is because his car could not get through the flood and he knew it. He left it at the local grocery store, which I guess from experience he knew would be safe for the car and that's when he walked home. So I took care of sharing that video in case anybody else wanted to know what that area looked like. I wanted to give them warnings because keep in mind that's how people die. A lot of times they are driving and they're not gauging how deep the water is and they're like, I'll make it and that's when their cars get stuck and that's when their cars get destroyed. I'm not sure that a lot of people had a good gauge of how deep the water was in fact in the end of my brother's video, he ran into a few people that were attempting to drive through there and he gave them some good warnings. The next morning I wake up with a picture from my brother and a text that says, everything I own is gone. He's a comedian so I didn't know if he is using someone else's photo, if he's making this up. As far as I knew everything was fine, like I really didn't believe it. Even though in the picture there's water all the way up to like three, four feet and you can see that things are obviously damaged. You could see that it's a house full of water but like to me this could have been anybody's. I had no idea. So I wake up frantically and I call him. I'm like, are you okay? He's like, yep. I slept in my attic last night. I'm like, what do you mean? I just went to bed with a video of you making it home and now you're in your attic and he's like, yep. That's exactly what happened. I guess at four or five in the morning it started flooding in there and he knew he had to go into his attic. And I said, what are you going to do? Because at this moment as far as I knew it was still raining, right? Like if it's five feet of water in your house right now, what if it becomes six, seven, eight feet of water? You're going to drown and you're going to die. He said, I was told to stay put. Oh my God. I think fast. I say, go on periscope. Let me see exactly what's going on. He goes, okay, I'll call you right back. I log on frantically and there he is kind of up in the attic, periscoping and the great thing about this is that I don't think he wanted to leave. Like I think he didn't want to leave but because the advice of certain people was to stay especially since how do you get out? If the whole block is covered in five, six feet of flood, how are you going to get out? Isn't it safer to be on your roof? Is it safer to be in your attic? But then again, is it? Cause what if it keeps on raining and the whole house goes under? What if it's like has a sort of tsunami effect? What if you can't get out for days? You haven't eaten and you're freezing and God knows what is in the water and it's biting you. Like that was my concern. Once I saw him on Periscope, I saw that the water kind of came up to here on him and I realized maybe he can get out of this. At least he's able to stand in his house. He goes outside, he opens the front door and I see sunlight. The sunlight is kind of comforting except for the whole block is literally four, five feet deep in water. He's saying, what should I do guys? My logic was if you're standing now, it's sunny out and it's not currently raining and it's due to rain until Wednesday. Get out of there now. My dad's house was fine. So in my head, if he was able to get to my father's place, he could eat, he could shower, he could finally be all right. Cause not every house flooded there but the majority of houses do. And I should clarify something for you guys. Although you can't predict which homes are gonna flood, there are some homes that kind of never flood or haven't flooded in 60 years. And there's some areas that have had four floods in five years. So a lot of people can gauge a little bit or guesstimate or have already raised their homes. So they kind of know what is going to happen. So that's why some people don't exactly evacuate. The reason my brother went to his place, he had every intention of going to my father's place that night except he could not get into my dad's area. That place was blocked off by flooding but his house on the one side that it was on didn't flood at all. So my brother knew he couldn't get there with the car. The closest place he could get to was that grocery store and walk to his house. Two good things came from that. The first thing was that because of the McGregor fight, Danny and Cio ordered it on pay-per-view at my dad's house so they could watch it with dad. But before they left, Cio thought to take Ty. I spoke to Cio about this and Cio said, I didn't want to take Ty because it was raining and I didn't really want to disrupt his comfort and bring him out in the rain. And I was worried about that. But then I thought, what if we can't get back home tonight? And I really don't want to put Ty to bed so early because it would be 8.30 and usually he goes to bed at 10. So I decided to bring him. That was the best decision she could have made. If Ty hadn't gone to watch the McGregor fight with Cio over to my dad's, I don't know what would have happened. I believe he would have survived because my brother obviously would have taken him up to the attic with him. But I think the rescue would have been a lot more difficult and a lot harder. I think it's pretty amazing that Ty was over there. Ty went to bed early that night, she said. So he wasn't too disturbed by the rain for him. It was just another day of rain. You know, it rains in Texas. And in the morning when he woke up, it was just again, another day of rain. So in the meantime, Ty, Cio and my dad are all fine. Meanwhile, my brother has just opened the door to his whole block underwater and he's asking us on Periscope what to do. I'm saying, leave. It looks like you can stand. It's sunny outside. You could get to dad's. You could get some food. You could get some water and you can have a good shower. My brother was worried because either my dad or Cio told him maybe you should stay and be safe. That was before they had really seen and assessed the situation. There was somebody else on Periscope that said, yeah, man, leave. And I think because everyone was saying leave, my brother got encouraged. Once he got on camera and opened the door, his spirits had changed. He became like happy to be reporting, worried about other people. He opened the door and he saw people on a roof with a dog and suddenly everything was different for him. I could see it in him. He was like, wait a minute, I could swim. I'm strong. There are other people that need help. And he heard people calling for help and I could hear people calling for help through the Periscope live video. And then my brother says, hey, man, is everything okay? What do you need? He told me that there was a boat going around and I'm like, yes, that's amazing. Maybe somebody will help you get out of there. And he's like, no, Marlene, let the boat help other people get out of there. I'm gonna walk out of here. On camera, somebody advises him to get a garbage bag to put his stuff in, because he has to carry CO's purse and a few other things. And he starts trying to leave. We're watching him walk through all of this water. And then he says, guys, it's too deep. I gotta go. Now, I'm frantic. Do you guys really wanna know the honest truth of what I had to do that day? It was my sister's birthday the day after. We didn't wanna celebrate it on Saturday, on Sunday. We had all these plans to go to the dog beach. That's what my sister wants to do every year. She loves a dog. She loves a dog beach. She wants to see the dogs happy. Like I'm Cinderella with the bird. She's like the same girl, but with the dogs. So we always go to the dog beach. She comes home in the morning. I'm like, have you seen what's going on with Danny? She's like, no, what? Now, I have to be brave for my brother. At least I think I do. I'm sure he's fine. But I also have to like be the big sister and be like, yes, let's go to the beach for your birthday, of course. There's not really anything I can do from my brother from here. But I did not stop watching him for one second. When we got there, I would go up, try to get reception, contact CEO, contact Danny, contact dad, contact every single person. I've always been kind of like mother hen. I don't know why. That's just how I am with my siblings. I need to know that everything is okay. So I'm following this story in the car everywhere. Every second that I'm out of touch with my brother, I'm freaking out and silently crying. We get in the car and the last I see of my brother is he's walking through these waters and they get way too deep. So deep that he can't go anymore. I don't know the area. I don't know anything about what's about to happen. I call my dad. Dad, what's going on? Is everything okay? He's like, yes, everything is okay. Danny, I got to go. He's on the periscope. I'm like, oh, I got to go then too. I got to watch it. He's not on periscope. I don't know what dad's talking about. Can't find him. Well, there he is on Facebook and he's being rescued on a boat. And that was the moment I realized how deep it was. This is like a boat with a motor going through the streets of Houston, Texas. It's insane and there's a surfer in the back. I have to take a moment to tell you what I know about these kids because my brother told me that he was able to find out some details about them. There are a group of kids that I call the Hurricane Harvey heroes. From what I can gauge, I think it seems like most of them are brothers. They lived in the area. They knew how bad it floods. I hope I have this story right. And the day before they drove to Galveston, Texas, which is kind of like the shore that they must have a beach house or something. And they got their boat and drove it back just to help people the next morning because they knew that their help was gonna be needed. These kids saved everyone. I'm not kidding you. It seemed like the entire community got a chance to get off their roofs and on their boat at some point. They saved families. They saved elderly. They saved kids, babies. I saw them save dogs and rabbits at one point. These kids brought everything and anyone that they could to safe ground, which was at Kroger, which is the grocery store in Texas. So I think that these kids deserve a lot of recognition, let me just say. Next thing you know, I see my brother on their boat and the title of his story says, been rescued. And I'm like in the car, like, I'm so happy my brother's okay. And I know that he's gonna be okay because I know he's strong, but I've missed every hurricane in Houston. I've never been in one. So I don't know, you know, how bad they get. I don't know that he's gonna go out and like put his life on the line to help others because that's how he is and get himself in dangerous situations, especially if there's like a bird somewhere or something, you know? So I knew he was probably gonna be sad when he goes back home. I just had this feeling and I've tried to tell him, hey, Danny, I know that you're kind of in good spirits now because you're in the middle of everything. I just wanna let you know, don't be sad when you go home because I can always feel him. And I just knew what it's gonna feel like for him because I feel like sometimes we're the same type of person. And that's how I would feel. Honestly, I'm sure that's how everybody feels in this situation. You see so many people at the end of these hurricanes, just outside of their houses, throwing stuff. It looks like houses being gutted. Every piece of furniture they own is now on the side of the street. That's what happens after these hurricanes. When I first called my dad to see who's okay, I'm like, where's Danny? Where's CEO? CEO is fine. The bird is with CEO. The dogs are fine. My dad is fine. My mom is in Ireland and Danny I'm hoping is going to be fine. So the next thing I know I'm on the beach and all I want to do is go up to find out how my brother is. I just kept calling my brother and my brother's girl and Danny didn't answer. And I didn't know where he had been or if he was okay or if he got home. When my brother went live on Facebook and he had his rescue, my other friend Sarah had seen where he was and said, go to my brother David's house. You're in that area and they have food and you can shower and you'll be safe. That was the last I heard and my brother didn't seem to be able to get any phone calls after that. And where I was, my phone wasn't going through at all. So I kept trying and trying to call him. I was basically, everyone was on the beach and there I was up top trying to get reception, frantically calling him, trying to see who had any info with him in the last 10 minutes. I call CEO and our calls keep dropping. Finally, I find a way to call her through going to some wifi and she answers and I say, what are you doing? She's like, I'm watching the kids outside playing the water. It's Sunday, there was already the flood. I guess kids brought out kind of like the boogie board. And I say, oh, that's interesting. I never thought that they could kind of play in that water, take some video for me. And I hear Ty on her shoulder and Ty's going, I got that one out. And she's like, yeah, I'm outside with him. We're watching the neighborhood. And suddenly while I'm on the phone, and of course I have so much anxiety, like where is my brother? Nobody has heard from him. I hear Ty screaming and he goes, Danny, Danny. And I'm like, CEO, now he's frantic, he misses Danny. She goes, I know, I know, I think he does. And suddenly Danny walks through the door. The bird had seen Danny before anybody recognized that it was him and knew that Danny was coming. How did Danny get home? Danny went to his friend David's house. They had food, they had water, he showered. And there was, I think from what I understand, a group of people there, but he wasn't able to leave David's house because that house was also flooded in. So I'm not sure if there was damage into the house, but you couldn't get out of that area. My dad called a friend and the friend had, I guess a high rise truck or van or Jeep. And he drove through the flood, picked up my brother and brought him home. I guess the moment that he was in the van, Ty saw him. So I was on the phone when my brother walked through the door and I said, just call me back when you can. I wanna know how everything is. I'm pretty sure you need your time now to shower and do whatever it is you need to do. And then CO filled me in on the rest. What happened was the dog diesel, we have two dogs there. This dog diesel is a Sheranian, which is half Pomeranian and half Shih Tzu. Diesel would not leave my brother's side. Neither would Ty. They were glued to him. Now you have to keep in mind, Ty is recently in the last, I guess whole years of my brother and CO's relationship been in love with CO. And of course he loves my brother as well, but he would not leave my brother alone. And apparently the dog and bird were fighting for my brother's attention and both of them were blocking each other from my brother. My brother was like, wow, these animals are exceptionally intuitive. It's almost like they could understand the energy that I was missing. So that was very interesting. Now of course my brother and CO could not go home. First of all, they have to now live back in my parents' house, but they obviously can't get home because it's flooded everywhere. There's nothing to do. You have to wait a few days, wait till all the water recedes. And then when it's safe, you go back and pull all your stuff out and put it on the lawn. That's pretty much the protocol. So they were all cooped up in my dad's house for a few days. And CO said that Ty was insane. She said, Ty doesn't usually scream unless he wants something. But if he's an eyes view of you, he's always happy. And if he wants something, they give it to Ty and he's fine. But for the last few days, Ty has been unconsolable. He's been screaming his head off and he hasn't been a normal bird at all. So it's been really stressful for them because anybody who knows how a lesser sulfur-accrested cockatoo sounds, you know that that is not the voice you wanna be hearing all day, especially not paired with an insane amount of anxiety that the bird is obviously feeling. My brother called me today and he said, you know what, Ty is so on edge that CO and I are going to take him back to the house. We think he wants to go home, but we think he needs to understand why we're not going home. That's how birds are, that's how smart they are and that's how you have to treat them. Of course the water has receded, so there's really no danger in taking him down there. My brother said he took Ty down there and Ty was looking all around, analyzing everything and all he wanted to do was go to his cage. So my brother led him on the top of his cage for a little bit just to see. It was only like the bottom that got flooded. Later on my brother took the cage outside, hosed it off. Ty has two cages in a stand at my brother's house and two cages in a stand at my dad's house. So he was doing quite okay except he had a lot of anxiety after the storm and obviously by how he was screaming for my brother when he saw him, he had a lot of anxiety while my brother was gone and he probably sensed that that is what's happening. So that whole time that I couldn't get in touch with my brother, I was really worried and really sad. I think the most impressive parts of this story is the power of social media one because here my brother goes live on Facebook and because of that our friend says, I know where you are, you can go to my brother's house. So he was able to get to safety because of that because let's face it, even though you're okay, your water is up to here. It's poisonous, there's alligators, there's snakes, there's fire ants, there's so many things that can happen to you. And it's important to be able to get to safety. So because of Facebook and him going live, he was able to get to a nice safe place because of Facebook, so many other people were able to help one another and come together and make groups and chats and locate who needs help, who needs the truck, who needs medical attention. People were remembering addresses of other people and posting them on Facebook. They were alerting anybody they knew with boats and vans and trucks that could possibly save people. It was really a group effort to get every single person home. I know that already 39 people have died in Hurricane Harvey, but in the mass destruction of what Hurricane Harvey has done, that's an impressively low number and I think a lot of it is attributed to social media and how we're all able to communicate and get ourselves out there and help one another. So that was one amazing thing and also thank God for the McGregor fight because if it wasn't for the McGregor fight, Ty would not be at my dad's and CEO would not be at my dad's. And so they were all safe because let's face it, I think it would have been a lot harder for them to do with the bird and a lot harder for CEO because I know it would have been hard for me to go through something like that. So there are little miracles that happen everywhere. So those are the little miracles that happen every single day. And I'm really happy that in the grand scheme of things, everybody is okay. It's gonna be a lot to put that city back together but out of all the communities in the world, I think Texas can do it. Honestly, I think it's such a great helpful state. So that is my story time Sunday. I hope you guys enjoyed the story. I hope this filled in a little bit for you about Ty and where he is and if he is okay. That's basically my perspective of the story. Hopefully for whatever Wednesday this week, I'll have something together about the hurricane from my brother's entire point of view. I've been working on it and it looks like a really, really good story to really feel what it feels like to be in the middle of the hurricane and the destruction. So if you're interested in something like that, please tune in on Wednesday. And that is it. Thank you guys so much for watching. Please subscribe. We love new subscribers. And please come and join Parrot Station. That is my Facebook group where I can see your birds and hear about your stories. Thank you guys so much. Follow me on Instagram if you would like to know more and see my birdies. I hope everybody affected by Hurricane Harvey is doing okay. Drop me a note. Let me know what your experience was. And of course, if your birdie is okay. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. Bye.