A truck sold by a Kansas dealership cannot be taken from the lot by its new owner because a family of robins is living atop one of the vehicle’s tires.
The relatively novel situation has gained widespread attention after the dealership in the Kansas community of Olathe wrote about it on its Facebook page – and it perhaps taught many that active robin nests are protected by federal law from the US.
A few weeks earlier, employees at the Olathe Ford Lincoln dealership discovered a robin building a nest atop a tire of the truck in question. The bird laid four stunningly blue eggs over the next few days, the dealership wrote in a 14 May Facebook post.
The eggs hatched more recently, and the robin is caring for the baby birds, the dealership said.
Video and audio published by the dealership shows the birds chirping in the nest, sitting neatly on a Ford F-250 tire.
That Ford F-250, meanwhile, was bought. But the customer was not able to drive it off the lot because the robin and its eggs fall under a 1918 US wildlife protection law known as the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
“We want to give a huge THANK YOU to our incredibly kind and understanding customers, who have been so patient and thoughtful while we wait for these little ones to grow up and leave the nest safely,” the dealership added in its Facebook post.
Olathe Ford Lincoln also thanked Operation Wildlife, a non-profit wildlife rehabilitation facility in Kansas, for providing what the dealership called “guidance”.
As that post went viral, the dealership quickly seized on the attention. One of the employees at the dealership made a video of the bird family that showed how much the hatchlings had grown in just a few days. They also named the birds: Lugnut, Turbo, Diesel and Axel.
“So what made you guys choose Olathe Ford Lincoln?” the employee asks the birds in the video.
A text graphic purporting to be the birds’ subtitled response read: “We were looking for a dealership with strong values and minimal hawk traffic.”
According to a report from local news outlet KMBC, the dealership has found other animals such as cats and opossums living in some of its vehicles.