A 45-year-old bird who spent his life living in a pub where he enjoyed steak and eggs for breakfast and drank coke with ice has died after a life of comfort and excess.
Joe the kea spent his time living at Takaka’s Junction Hotel on the South Island of New Zealand where his owner poured beers for almost half a century.
Nola Drummond adopted Joe after he had been abandoned in the late 1960s in the Cobb Valley region, Stuff reported.
Ms Drummond’s father-in-law gave her the big, fluffy parrot after it arrived at the hotel and became a ‘bit of a nuisance.’
Joe the kea (pictured) spent most of his life living at a New Zealand pub where he enjoyed drinking coke with ice
The pair developed a strong bond and Ms Drummond began to feed the kea an unusual diet.
Joe came to enjoy raw egg, steak and specially sourced dandelion root despite being an omnivore who typically eats plants, beetle larvae and other birds.
‘He thought he was a human so we would just take down a selection of what we would be eating throughout the day and whatever he didn’t want, the sparrows would get,’ Ms Drummond said.
While other birds came through the hotel doors over the years, Joe refused to move on from the hotel.
He became territorial about his home and would often fight with other kea, turkeys and chickens who visited.

Joe became part of the furniture at the pub but some regulars didn’t like his presence as he had a tendency to rip ladies stockings (pictured: Joe with Ms Drummond’s daughter in law Karalyn Barnett)
Joe became known as part of the furniture at the hotel but not all patrons were thrilled by his presence.
‘He had a penchant for ladies with nylon stockings, he’d run his beak down them and watch them tear,’ Ms Drummond said.
‘You certainly couldn’t leave your boots around him, and he tore up a diving suit on the washing line once.’
There were also incidents where Joe would swipe at patrons noses and legs.
Despite this, he was given the freedom to roam around the hotel except on busy occasions where he was kept in a large cage.
Joe died died in 2012 after a ‘good innings’, but his life story and cheeky personality has only come to light recently.
The oldest known kea in captivity died at the age of 50.
The Drummond family were upset when Joe died as he had become part of the family, despite costing a fortune.
The hotel was demolished shortly after Joe’s death.

Ms Drummond said that Joe (pictured) had a good innings when he died at the age of 45 in 2012