Most people probably expect a smoke detector to let them know their house is on fire, but this family had backup.

When their house was ablaze in the early hours of the morning, family members were woken up by their pet parrot Louie’s cries of “fire!” Amazingly, they say the bird had never said the word before but was still able to use it in that situation.

“Louie is a true hero,” Barbara Klein, from Lebanon, TN told news agency Southwest News Service (SWNS). “If it weren’t for him I probably would have been sleeping during the fire. He started squawking ‘fire.’ He had never said that word before in my recollection. When I woke up, the fire was starting to spread across the living room floor.”

Unfortunately, Louie and the family’s dogs didn’t survive the fire. Barbara’s husband and their 6-year-old granddaughter escaped with their lives, although Barbara’s husband, Larry, was hospitalized.

Barbara told SWNS, “He ran to the kitchen and was trying to put the fire out with water. After we left, he ran back into the house to try to save our puppies and his grandfather’s guitar. He kept saying he couldn’t breathe and I was shouting at him to leave the house. I told him to get down and he crawled out. I pulled him out of the fire. Then we got in the car and drove out of the driveway.”

According to Barbara, Larry “burned his hands, face and nose and they had to clean his lungs out. He was put into a coma. It was a miracle he survived.”

Lucky for him, Larry was able to leave the hospital for his granddaughter’s birthday party.