TALKATIVE PET PARROT SAVES AUSSIE FROM HOUSE FIRE

An Australian man survived a fire that destroyed his Queensland home after his pet parrot screeched his name to alert him to the blaze, Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) reported.

Anton Nguyen was asleep when a fire broke out in his home in the city of Brisbane, local media reported. His parrot Eric squawked "Anton! Anton!" several times to alert him.

"Eric, my parrot, he started to yell, so I woke up and I smelled a bit of smoke, I grabbed Eric, opened the door and looked to the back of the house and saw some flames," Nguyen told Nine News.

Emergency crews arrived at the scene around 2:30 a.m. to find Nguyen and Eric outside the house which was "well engulfed" in flames. They were able to extinguish the fire before it reached neighboring properties, but Nguyen's timber home was destroyed. "There were smoke detectors [but] the bird alerted before the smoke detectors went off," Queensland Fire and Emergency Services Acting Inspector Cam Thomas told national broadcaster ABC. Nguyen said he was in shock, "but I'm fine."