The cool nights are nearly causing her to have a conniption.

It’s not that she doesn’t like fall.

She’s worrying about the fate of the cockatiel that’s moved into her back yard.

“He’s been here since Labor Day,” said Cherry.

He apparently just picked her yard off Old Beatty Ford Road near Fox’s Store at random.

“He looks just like the cockatiel on the front of the ‘Cockatiel Treats’ package,” said Cherry.

She went to a pet store to find some food and saw the package.

“He’s got a white body, gray wings and orange dots under his eyes.”

A cockatiel is a small, crested Australian parrot with gray and yellow plumage.

She doesn’t really know whether “He” is a he or a she. For the time being, though, the bird is “He.”

Cherry has been putting out food. She doesn’t know whether He is eating it or if the other birds that visit her feeders are getting it all.

A near crisis occurred last week. She didn’t know what He would do with Hurricane Floyd on the way.

For a while, He just disappeared.

“I thought we had lost him,” said Cherry. She kept looking, though, and sure enough He came back.

Cherry has tried to enlist help, calling pet stores, friends and newspaper editors.

She doesn’t want the bird, but she would like to catch him and find him indoor quarters for the winter.

From what she’s heard, cockatiels can be very temperamental.

“They’re like a one-woman man,” said Cherry.

Out on surgical leave from her job at Fieldcrest Cannon, Plant 1, in Kannapolis, Cherry has tried to strike up a friendship with the visitor.

She talks to him quite a bit. She’s gotten close enough so that she can see the orange dots under his eyes.

He may be a bit wary of the two cages she now has in the yard, with doors open, inviting him in. He flies by the cages, then glides into a nearby field which grew a milo crop. There He apparently finds plenty of food.

He hangs around Cherry’s house in the morning and evening. During the midday, He goes off to do what ever cockatiels do. And she doesn’t know where He goes at night.

She hopes to get some ideas or help on how to get the bird inside before cold weather.

But if He had rather be free, she adds, “I’d sooner He die happy.”