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September 27, 2005
Of Parrots And Boas
One day, Emiliano came by with a couple
of baby parrots. Apparently they had fallen out of the nest, and
someone found them and sold them topototo who then sold them to Emiliano for $2 apiece. Whatever the truth may be, I am hoping that at those prices the incentives for locals to steal parrots out of their nests is negligible... Emiliano gave one of the birdies to Man Hing and the other one, who seemed to have some kind of back injury, to us.
Kay did a wonderful job of feeding the little guy, and pretty soon, Quasi[modo], as we named him, starting eating rice and fruit, and soon thereafter, got interested in all kinds of other edible colourful things.
He
was easy to please... anything plastic was a fascinating toy for a few
days. [And WHY do I own a Barbie toothbrush? Well, one day I called
Eric while he was at the drugstore, he asked if I needed anything, I
said Ineeded a toothbrush, he asked what kind, and I made the mistake
to say "whatever, you pick"]Quasi definitely liked water, and was fascinating by the sparkly reflections of the sun in the ocean, so we had to fish him out on many occasions. The picture shows his first voluntary, freshwater bath.
Man Hing's parrot also did
quite well, although he found a rather spectacular, but violent and
involuntary death way too soon. At night, he stayed in a little cage
that was hung under the roof by Man Hing's dock, outside. One morning,
the parrot was gone, and there was a boa with a parrot sized lump in
the cage. Apparently, an opening in the cage was large enough for a
boa, but too small for a fed boa. As sad as the situation was, I had to
laugh at our little real life fable here, and think of The Little
Prince... "dessine-moi un mouton, err, oiseau?". Anna insisted that the
boa
be killed, and had we not been there, eating the parrot would have
been the Boa's last move. But we were, and managed to convince them
that the snake did was was in its nature (here we go, more fable
stuff), and that you can't leave your parrot
exposed outside like that... that a boa is not dangerous, and revenge
serves no purpose. So later that afternoon, Kay set the boa free, in
the back of the property. It was still very placid, dealing with its
big meal, and did not want to leave its cozy cage... But eventually Kay
got it out, and sent it off to freedom.
Posted by rick at September 27, 2005 03:50 AM