Homeless jazz singer and her parrot have developed an unbreakable bond

Wende Harston is reminded of her string of bad luck every time she walks out the front door of the Gabriel Foundation in Denver, Colorado, without her best friend Sam the African Parrot. "It kills me. It absolutely kills me," she says.



The lead singer of a jazz band in Denver, Wende spent most of the first half of 2015 homeless. She lived in an immobile RV in a warehouse district illegally plugged into a business's power to keep a few electronics powered on inside. "Things just got bad quicker than I anticipated," she said.

Her parrot, Samula, couldn't stay in the RV with her due to a lack of space, so late last year she turned it over to the Gabriel Foundation, one of the largest parrot rescues in the world. What the people at the Gabriel Foundation couldn't have anticipated back then was that week after week, Wende would return to keep in touch with her bird.


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It's turned into quite the unusual and musical arrangement. The good news is that this week, Wende should be able to pick Sam back up. She's found a mobile home big enough to support a bird cage for Sam.