Bonaire is a dry island full of cacti and baked earth and yet this morning like many in the last month it is raining cats and dogs. The dirt track leading to my little house is no longer a track at all but a veritable lake. This morning’s inundation of yet more water is however a good thing. This dear reader is not because it will noursirsh the trees that feed the parrots or serve some other much needed ecological purpose but because it means I can do nothing other than hide away indoors and finally write that blog I have promised you for so long with wondrous tales of all things parrots. And so without further ado, before I slip back into those tales of the terror that is computer based work, or mention that like any good Hollywood blockbuster this story of joy, happiness, sadness and hope is based (loosely) on a true story, and it will be ragaled in two parts; lets get to the rather un-imposingly named story:
Little Monty’s second chance!
It was a sunny day and Mrs Python like most Yellow-shouldered Amazon Parrot ladies had had a busy few months. She quite frankly wanted nothing more than to sit in a calabash tree on a hillside, take it easy and enjoy the view. First there had been the nest prospecting over which Mr and Mrs Python had nearly fallen out, and this was before the breeding season had even begun. This is because instead of wanting to enthusiastically view all the possible nest sites with his loved one Mr Python had offered to sit and wait so that Mrs Python could continue doing her perusing without dragging him along. That of course, as any lady parrot would appreciate, is not the point, because at any moment she might want his opinion on a particular nest. And so it was that together they looked at all the available options in the area before Mrs Python finally decided they would do best to go back and settle on the first nest she had looked at. One must point out that we highly disciplined and conservative conservationists of course do not normally anthropomorphize and name the parrots we are here to serve. With the exception of Monty whom at this point in the story is not even an egg yet, these names are entirely fictitious.
After a short but colourful period of nest/home improvement, copious copulation and bit of warfare with the neighbours that any good Amazon parrot would have been proud of, Mrs Python was getting clucky. In a process that can best be described by any Mr Parrot as eye watering, Mrs Python went about the business of laying her clutch of eggs. In a little over a week she had produced four beautiful white eggs, by which point Mrs Python was ever so grateful to not be a kiwi. The kiwi of course dear reader, lays the largest egg in relation to it’s body size of any bird.
Next was incubation which Mrs Python has always said is a bit like a month of sailing, that is: mostly boring with a few passing moments of terror. Warming eggs, warming eggs, warming eggs, “is that an introduced mammalian predator (cat) I hear climbing the nest tree about to come and eat me”, “ah, no”, warming eggs, warming eggs, warming eggs. But soon enough incubation concluded and four tiny pink bundles of joy emerged, one of which would later become known as Monty.
Over the next two months Mr and Mrs Python nurtured their wonderful chicks. The chicks themselves made a marvelous transition from helpless, eyeless, little pink things to stunning and sleek fledglings, doing all that growing with such incredible efficiency. Monty was loved by his family. His parents were generous with food but also with discipline and is so rarely the case these days, and so he and his siblings were neither cantankerous nor tempestuous young parrots. Even during the brief starvation period that Mr and Mrs Python had enforced in order to draw their young family out of their nest, the chicks maintained their good manners. And so one by one the young Pythons emerged and entered the big wide world. If the last 3 months had been a strain for Mrs Python then those first weeks when the chicks were fledging would be at a least a strain and a half, if not two strains. She and Mr Python found themselves flying up and down their happy little valley in endless search and rescue missions as they tried to locate their various offspring. Over time the fledglings’ proficiency improved and they made fewer and fewer crash landings into random trees. It was at this time, when the youngest of their four had been out of the nest two weeks, when Mrs Python herself was doing the wanting of nothing more, with which we started this story.
It was a sunny day and Mrs Python decided the time had come when her new family were ready to venture into the local village where juicy mangos and other exotic fruits were to be found on garden trees. Together Mr and Mrs Python and their offspring and the nieghbours and their offspring flew south in a more or less orderly flock. Before crashing into a mango tree the group first alighted on a haphazard collection of telegraph wires where all could be counted and accounted for. Thankfully the Pythons and the neighbours had all made it. The parents felt relief and satisfaction. The young fledglings cavorted and screamed with their excitement even though they weren’t the least bit interested in the juicy Mangos, for they were still being feed by their parents. Suddenly the parrots became aware of a strange animal beneath them on the ground. The parents realized with horror there was danger and they took their turn to scream, urging they young families to fly. Before he could open his wings poor Monty had been knocked about the head with a big stick and he fell from the wire to the ground.
Clearly Monty hasn’t yet had his second chance. Worry not dear reader part two of this incredible story will be posted on this very blog in the not too distant future, but for now the story ends on this sad cliff hanger (and that last bit really is true).
How Mrs Python would have liked to spend her day
Cavorting young parrots
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