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When a parrot stole a British tourist's passport in New Zealand

     London: A British tourist was left in the lurch after a large wild parrot known as the kea stole his passport in New Zealand. According to the police, the Scottish visitor lodged his complaint of theft from a tour bus on its way to Milford Sound, a coastal beauty spot in South Island's rugged Fiordland region. And a police spokesman in Te Anau, the nearest town, has revealed that the kea had swept off a brightly coloured courier bag containing the man's passport, just when the coach made a stop and the driver opened the luggage compartment. While the passport has not been recovered as yet, officers find it difficult to trace it down, given the 4,600 square mile size of Fiordland's alpine national park. The Scotsman, on the condition of anonymity, said that the British High Commission in Wellington has told him that he might have to wait for up to six weeks before receiving a replacement passport. He said that he was planning to return home to Scotland in August. "Being Scottish, I've got a sense of humour, so I did take it with humour, but obviously there is a side of me that is still raging," the Telegraph quoted him as telling the Southland Times newspaper. He added: "My passport is somewhere out there in Fiordland. The kea is probably using it for fraudulent claims or something."
-May 29, 2009

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