READ!!!
A video posted on YouTube by a Siesta Key resident seems like something a visitors bureau would love.
It is about John Lieurance's love for the beach there, the kind of place, he says and demonstrates, where you can ride your bike on the wet sand and "you can take your parrot!"
The video shows him pedaling casually at the water's edge with his parrot perched happily on a backpack.
I'd say he needs to run a correction now. He's wrong about Siesta Key. It is not at all a place where you can bring a parrot to the beach, thanks to rigid enforcement by the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office.
On Memorial Day, a middle-age visitor from Land O'Lakes — former Sarasota resident Wade Pitzer — had just arrived on the beach with his wife and young daughter. Pitzer had their two small monk parrots on his shoulder.
It was, once again, a scene any visitors' bureau should pay to have flashed around the world. A couple of people had already asked to have their picture taken with him and the birds, Pitzer says.
Then Deputy Christian McGregor approached Pitzer on an ATV and told Pitzer the parrots had to go. A county ordinance bans pets at the beach, the deputy said.
That's true. The ordinance bans dogs and cats "and other pets."
Of course, the beach is much frequented by birds. Gulls, herons, pelicans, egrets, and numerous other wild bird species are all over. Signs advise people to enjoy the birds. And so, I'm guessing parrots were not what county commissioners were worried about when they passed that ordinance.
"I didn't bring my llama or my pig," Pitzer told me.