Fort Lauderdale restaurant calls for return of beloved chicken named Mabel after the ‘community staple’ was stolen by a stranger

Restaurant workers in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, have launched an appeal for the return of a beloved chicken by the name of Mabel. The poultry was a “community staple” and was often seen perched outside the restaurant. Unfortunately, surveillance footage shows that Mabel was kidnapped, or birdnapped, by an unknown individual.

Mabel was known to all the customers and workers at Top Hat Deli in Southern Florida, and the bird had quickly become a beloved part of the restaurant. So much so that Top Hat Deli manager Julio Rodriguez felt genuine concern when he came in to work in the morning and couldn’t find her. 

Mabel had become something of an icon amongst regulars and people in the area after arriving roughly a year ago. “We have so many customers with pictures of her and videos of her, so she became, like, our mascot.” So when she disappeared all of a sudden on that fateful morning, there was naturally concern for the beloved bird’s wellbeing.

“When I came in that morning after saying good morning to her for months, and she wasn’t there, I immediately missed her,” Rodriguez said. Mabel’s absence was first noticed on the morning of Wednesday, August 26. “I walked around the property looking for her, expecting to see her either hurt or passed away, and I couldn’t find her,” the Top Hat manager told CBS Miami.

Surveillance footage showed Mabel had been taken

Eventually, workers decided to check CCTV to get some answers, and what they saw shocked them. Mabel is seen perched on a railing outside the restaurant when an unknown man in a green shirt is seen approaching the bird from behind. The man then snatches Mabel and walks away with her in his arms.

“We were all shocked and devastated,” said Rodriguez after viewing the footage. Meanwhile, customers at the restaurant noted that a chicken was “a very odd thing to steal.”

However, workers at the restaurant are still holding out hope that Mabel is still out there and that someone will be able to help find her. “My hope is that maybe with all this exposure, which we are totally amazed by, that maybe somebody does know something about it,“ a hopeful Rodriguez stated.

On TikTok, commenters rather pessimistically assumed that Mabel was no more: “Oh he ate that f—ing chicken no doubt,” one person wrote. Others predicted Mabel had been turned into nuggets. Another criticized the restaurant for not giving Mabel a shelter of some sort. While it’s possible that the man took the bird somewhere safe, many have assumed the worst: “he probably did something terrible by the way he handled it,” another commenter guessed.