madurai it was an emotional drama in muniyandikoil 2nd cross street at meenambalpuram in madurai as m aged around 50 gave a teary farewell to her pet parakeet named abi she has been raising the roseringed parakeet for the last five years the district forest department has taken out a campaign to recover all the roseringed parakeets raised in the households of the city and on the outskirts never felt lonely after the members of the house leave for their work she was my only company as she used to respond as i kept talking to her doing my chores said murugeswarimurugeswarishe was desperate and wanted to know if she could have it back but forest officials sternly told her that it is illegal to raise parakeets as pets the department decided to take up the campaign after they received a tipoff that more than 100 roseringed parakeets are raised as pets in the areas of sellur meenambalpuram and narimedu so we have been sensitizing residents here that it is illegal to raise wild birds like parakeets at home the campaign will go on till july 17 and the public are asked to hand over the wild birds at the district forest office said forest range officer e sarumathi who is in charge of the campaign there is no dearth of interesting events after the campaign started on wednesday forest officials would go around with a megaphone making announcements to the public and people would reluctantly start handing over their pet parakeets a schoolgirl was seen bringing three parakeets and gave them a farewell kiss before handing them over another man bought the parakeet in an autorickshaw and handed them over to forest department officialswildlife crime patrol and wildlife range are involved in the exercise when the campaign commenced in meenambalpuram on thursday there was a lot of flutter in the area many wanted to know if the campaign was applicable only to parakeets or other birds too some stray doves visit my house and i feed them crumbs could that be an offense too a boy asked forest officials another man found it an opportunity to complain about his neighbour raising five pairs of lovebirds they are too chirpy and annoying arent they parrots too and cant they be seized the man wanted to knowthe pet owners who tried to hide their birds were revealed by their jealous neighbours in one case the pet itself betrayed the owner when the latter tried to hide the bird the forest staffers after learning that there was a parakeet in the house shook the cage with the recovered parakeets they were carrying as soon as the agitated parakeets squawked there was a response from inside the house and the bird was recovered most of the pet owners were very reluctant to give away their parakeets they argued that those birds are silent when compared to hundreds of stray dogs and cattle which are a menace in locality so far the department has