Guacamaya

I was one of the ones who found the birds.

Hours, days, weeks spent trudging through wretched Honduran tropical forests. Too long getting sucked dry by mosquitoes, hacking through shrubs and vinery, and the occasional close call with venomous snakes. Coiled tightly around themselves under large leaves or wrapped around thick tree branches. They were everywhere.

A man approached me 7 years ago with this “opportunity”. I was 16 and had dropped out of school. Mama had warned me about Santos long before. Everyone in the village knew he made his money in a variety of not so legal ways.

A few years after Mama died I disobeyed her for the first time. I figured she would forgive me, being gone and all. If she even saw.

It was only a few days in that I began finding their nests, tucked into holes in tall trees near the river. I had a knack for it. And lucky for me they always seemed to be together. Where there was one guacamaya, there were more. But they were smart, smarter than me sometimes. And I was sure, more times than not, they saw me before I ever set eyes on their brightly colored wings. Many times I would set out to trap some, only to spend the whole day catching glimpses of red, yellow, and blue. They were fast. But soon I became faster. Smarter. Better than they were. I watched them.

The macaws lived on roughly the same twenty-four hour cycle we did. Settling down to roost just before sunset and waking at the crack of dawn. This twelve hour period, when the rest of my friends slept safely in their beds, I ventured out with a headlamp and a basket.

I wasn’t sure how others did it, I never saw others or went out with them. I just delivered every catch to Santos at the end of the night, guilt compelling me to swaddle them with fabric and cushion the bottom of my basket, and took my pay.

I never went for the adults. They were much too fast and too smart. Trying to trap them would have been ambitious at best. Deluded at worst. But at night when they all slept, the eggs and babies were easy to snatch.

It went on like this for years. I would wake just before sunset, slog around the damp, muddy forest floor, get lucky or sometimes not, and then crash on my mattress in the single room I called home. Lunch was whatever fruit I found while looking for them. Papayas and mangoes. Rambutan and cacao were my favorite as well. I was making good money and could afford eggs and chicken and fish. I wasn’t lacking.

At a certain point I felt it worth the money to buy thicker pants, and a few shirts with sleeves that stopped at my wrist. Later, I added a bug hat to keep out mosquitoes and gloves for grabbing rough branches when I climbed up to the birds’ nests. I had a full uniform.

In the last couple years I could make a catch everyday. A basket of pearly white eggs or scrawny baby macaws with thin necks and beady eyes.

One day I only caught one. It was the oldest macaw I’d ever gotten, still not full grown but aware. And it was visibly distressed. After a few hours I realized I wouldn’t find another and headed back north to where the trees thinned out and Santos lived. I could feel it pacing around the basket as I walked. It began making a sharp, trilling sound and crying out. My skin chilled and my heart clenched every time it warbled. Too many times, it sounded exactly like a human baby.

I knew it was scared. I knew I would be.

And maybe it was the fact that it was getting harder and harder to find them. Maybe it was the money not being as good. Maybe it was build-up, from years of taking babies from their nests, their homes, and their mothers. Maybe it was their intelligence and the life long relationships they possessed. Maybe it was their beauty and the envy I felt without fail when I watched them take to the sky. Through the dense, leafy umbrella of branches and out from under the shadows.

Or maybe it was that one moment I will never forget, Hand outstretched, reaching for a nest just as the sun began to peek through the canopy, creating the scattered beams of light that caught the striking wingspan of an adult macaw. An early riser. The vivid, intense blue of its wings made even more so as it soared in and out of the light.

Maybe it was the frightened sound coming from my basket that had not stopped once, that made me think of all these things.

But I turned around. Walked three hours back to the river, followed it east for another two and came upon the bird’s tree. Then I slung the baskets strap around my shoulder and the other around my waist so it hung securely at my side as I climbed up to it’s nest.

The baby macaw was chirping louder now and the sun was out. By the time I pulled myself up to the branch where an assortment of twigs and tufts of animal hair was tucked into a hole in the trunk, I was drenched in sweat. I opened the basket and cupped my hands to lift the bird out. And before I placed it back in it’s nest I stroked it’s head with one finger, gently.

Maybe I imagined that it’s cries no longer sounded scared. But cheerful instead.

All I know is that I did not imagine the relief I felt when climbing back down that tree and chucking my basket into the river.

********

I still go into the forest now, looking for scarlet macaws. And I still have a basket. But it’s not for the birds. It’s for my camera and my notes. I keep track of them now.

And every once in a while I’ll see one fly again, the wings glimmering in the light the same way. I imagine it being the one I put back. And it makes me smile.