Last updated 12:42, Monday, 25 August 2008

EVENING Mail readers have solved the mystery of a disappearing one-eyed talking magpie.

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Geordie escaped from the refuge of Furness animal rescuer Pat Denny last Wednesday.

The bird was rescued as a baby and can say his own name and make comments like: “Where’s me worms?”

Miss Denny was distraught when Geordie escaped from her home in Cliffe Lane, Hawcoat, and launched a last-ditch plea in the Evening Mail asking for help to trace the bird.

And her appeal in the Evening Mail helped provide a vital breakthrough in the search.

Miss Denny said: “It kept going up to a woman who thought it was an ordinary magpie and kept shooing it away.

“She pointed it out to her father and when he got home he read the Evening Mail and saw the story about Geordie, so he told his daughter.”

Geordie had flown the coop again by the time Miss Denny arrived at the house in Hawcoat Lane, but he was soon spotted in the bushes of a nearby garden.

Miss Denny said: “I had some of his favourite Bakewell tart in my hand, so I said, ‘look what I’ve got for you, Geordie’, and he came on to my hand.

“Looking for him is like looking for a needle in a haystack and I couldn’t have done it without the help of the Evening Mail.”

Geordie escaped once before and was seen by bemused patients knocking on the windows of the maternity ward of Furness General Hospital, before the one-eyed wanderer was rounded up.

Miss Denny said: “He didn’t speak a word for the first two days and was all fluffed up, but he is back to normal now.”

With that emergency over, Miss Denny is now busy nursing a young cormorant back to health.

She rescued it before and it flew away in peak condition a few days ago, but was found walking around Schneider Road clearly in some sort of trouble.

At least she doesn’t need to worry about Geordie now.