Pretty Wild Things, Captured And Caged

It’s Sunday morning and I’ve woken early with the sun just starting to rise over the ocean. I didn’t close the curtains last night so I could watch this miracle day starter ritual in real time. Such a glorious sight.

I laid there watching to the very end of the sun rise and then rose from my bed. After watching the world wake so miraculously, I am feeling blessed to be alive. Alive and happy.

I glance over at my husband, who is still heavily in dreamland and quietly leave the room. He doesn’t need to wake for another hour or so. As I said, it’s Sunday.

Sunday means a lot to my family, as it is the one day of the week totally devoted to family. No excuses, no cancelling for any reason whatsoever. Family day is important.

What we do on family day is dependent on a few things; like the weather, how everyone is feeling and how busy the week has been. If anyone is ill, we will have a family day in. If the weather is glorious we will have a family day out.

Today’s weather is going to be just perfect for a family day out. A drive in the country.

I rise early to get things organised. A hearty breakfast is needed before we leave and I also pack the car with such things as the picnic basket and rug, cooking utensils and pans we will need, plenty of water, buckets and a few cardboard boxes.

Once the car is packed, I start breakfast and wake the kids; Andrew, Sally and Jolene. They dive out of bed full of excitement for the day ahead.

After breakfast we all jump in the car, my husband Nigel hops behind the wheel and we are off. It takes about twenty minutes to leave suburbia and start driving through the windy roads of the countryside. For as far as the eye can see, there are glorious patches of rainforest, dispersed around the edges of cleared fields.

The kids are in the back seats fixated on staring out the windows. They know it’s their job to seek out and let us know when there see any sign of the things we are seeking on this beautiful tropical day.

Family day outings into the countryside is a favourite of our family and we are looking for two different things while driving along the windy roads. Mushrooms and baby Macaws.

The kids have their hawk-eyes peeled and will let us know when they see either a field with mushrooms popping up through the ground or tropical rainforest trees with knots or cavities that may just contain a birds nest.

Andrew gleefully yells, “Mushrooms in the field on my side.”

Nigel pulls over and parks the car on the road shoulder and we all jump out. I gather the buckets and knives from the boot and distribute them to the kids. We all climb over the wire fence and take off in different directions. It’s a great field for mushrooms and Andrew has ensured we will be having mushrooms fried in butter over an open fire for lunch today.

In about an hour the kids had completely filled their buckets with mushrooms. We had enough for lunch and extra to take home with us. A great day for mushrooming.

We all piled into the car again and off we go, hoping we are as successful today in collecting some baby birds to take home for our backyard aviary.

Driving through patches of rainforest, when Jolene pipes up saying she sees some good nesting trees. Nigel finds a good spot to park and pulls over. The kids pile out of the car and race through the rainforest.

By the time Nigel and I catch up, Sally is halfway up the tree. Sally is our natural born little monkey. There’s not a tree she couldn’t scale. Sally stops at a natural hole in the tree where we can hear baby birds chirping away. Sally reaches in and pulls out a baby Macaw. It’s so young that it doesn’t even have feathers yet. It’s this ugly ball of pink skin. Sally climbs down with the baby bird and puts it into the box I am holding. I have packed the box with old T-shirts to keep the birds warm and comfortable.

Sally informs us that there is a second baby in the nest and she starts to scale back up the tree trunk. She reaches in and captures the second baby, climbs back down and lays it next to the first baby in the box.

Two babies is a great score and makes for a successful family day out. We find a small clearing where we can light a fire and I cook mushrooms in butter with toast for our delicious lunch. Once everyone is sated, we pile back into the car and head home.

A very successful day. Enough mushrooms for another meal and two baby Macaws to add to our aviary.

We are almost home and as we turn into our street, we notice a large removalist truck parked outside the house next door to us. Looks like we are getting a new neighbour. I do hope they are nice people.

We pull into the driveway and begin getting out of the car when we notice a man heading our way. This must be our new neighbour.

The man smiles at us and says how happy he is to meet us. He has just purchased the property next door and is in the process of moving in. He introduces himself as Sean.

I introduce everyone and then leave Nigel and Sean chatting away as the kids and I start unpacking the car. The young babies are squawking away in their cardboard box. They are making so much noise that Sean starts to notice and begins asking questions. Nigel explains how successful our day has been.

I showed him the two baby Macaws and explain that they are probably hungry and I am about to take them inside to feed them some porridge by teaspoon. It’s a messy endeavour but the birds love porridge. They are too young yet to fend for themselves so I will hand raise them until they get all their feathers. Then they can go outside and into the aviary, with the three adult Macaws already in there. These three were hand raised last year.

As it turns out Sean knows a lot about native birds as it’s what he does career wise. He is very clued up on Macaws and he begins to tell us how the Macaws are becoming an extinct species. There are conservation concerns on the numbers of Macaws in the wild and the environmentalists are trying to find ways to save the dying breed.

Sean gently explains that what we were doing was wrong and a large contribution to the decreasing numbers in the wild.

Nigel and I were horrified to hear what Sean was saying. We had no idea and we never had any intention of hurting these birds. We believed we were giving them a good life. Although on thinking more about it, I’m not sure how we justified it to ourselves that we were doing a good thing by capturing these free birds and locking them in a cage for the rest of their lives.

I was saddened when thinking about our misguided errors and knew it was too late for the birds that we had caught. It’s not like we could go and put them back. I was distraught by the damage my family and I had done to these beautiful creatures and realised how totally selfish we had been.

Over the next few weeks I worked with our new neighbour Sean, to learn as much as I could and to put a plan together on how I could tour the countryside educating people about the Macaws and the problems they were facing. Hopefully by educating people we can save this beautiful bird from becoming extinct.

It was my way of giving back for all the damage my family and I had done to these glorious birds. We took our captured Macaws on the road with us and even the kids participated in the educational tours around the area.

I realised it was only ignorance that caused my family to unknowingly cause nature this horrific pain and the only way to stop others from making the same mistake was by educating them.

My family spent the next five years moving from town to town educating people with the help of our real life Macaws. We were honest on how we obtained our Macaws, apologising time and time again for our ignorance and selfishness.

I believe our honesty towards our mistakes was the best educational tool in our arsenal. We worked it to be as effective as possible to get the message out there.

We need to save our natural wildlife. Not just the Macaws but all wildlife. The world will cease to exist if we kill off all of nature’s beautiful creatures.

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