An excerpt from “The unpublished Echo training manual”

“Volunteers must be in good physical condition and we recommend the following acclimatisation training regime to simulate the conditions you will be working in:

One hour cycling

One hour on a Stairmaster in a sauna whilst being whipped with thorn branches,

Two hours sitting in the sauna

One hour on Stairmaster in sauna whilst being whipped with thorn branches

One hour cycling”

Heartwood

*CracK*

*TSCHEEW TSCHEEW TSCHEEW TSCHEEW TSCHEEW*

“Great going dumbass.” I mutter to myself as the bark splinters away from under my feet and a flurry of green streaks out of the tree above me. 

I had been hoping to avoid using the rusty, decrepit looking fence as a foothold but it looks like my tattered boots just won’t hold the bark.  I put my foot on the fence and it buckles unconvincingly, the only thing holding it upright against my weight is a section where the tree has grown around it, incorporating the iron into its trunk. It holds. From the few feet I can easily reach the first branch and scrabble upright. The tree is full of ants, but thankfully is one of the few trees in the forest that is not a tangled column of organic barbed wire. I keep close to the trunk and haul myself the final few feet, standing in the largest notch between branches.

There is nervous chatter in the canopy around me, a good sign, Loras whispering to one and other in their hushed tones somewhere between a waterfall and a purr. 

There are many gashes in this tree, where it has shed branches too costly to maintain in the scorching heat and unrelenting wind. One of which, now at head height, is emitting a musty, almost ocean-like smell.  I pull myself to the edge of it and peer in.

Six beady eyes stare back.

“Wow” I whisper, my voice filling the cavity as if omnipotent. Neither party breaks eye contact until I am forced to retreat to fumble with my camera. Upon looking back into the cavity the three forms are theatrically sprawled across the floor of their home. I pause a moment, then remember that playing dead is a well documented behaviour of young parrots and giggle at them, making them blink.

But I am here for more serious reasons than a game of sleeping lions.

Strapped to my waist, where a safety harness would normally be, is a camera trap.  The tree stands on what was once public land, and is easily accessible, a prime target for poaching.  I am tasked with setting a camera trap that will catch any poacher visiting the nest.

 It’s a f*cking exasperating task. Trying to hide a camera trap from an animal is one thing, but a human intent on not being caught is another. It must be out of sight and have a clear line of fire at the nest. The task took me three days to accomplish, and even now I am annoyed with the compromises that had to be made. More than 30 tree climbs to place, test, review footage and replace were all met with inexplicable failure, despite the nest being well in the range of the camera it could not detect my movements. The difficulty of such an apparently easy task is immensely frustrating, especially with temperatures reaching 32°C in the shade by 10am, and the cameras lives were threatened more than once. But perseverance, by its very meaning takes time to develop.

For me the realisation that my actions may be the difference between freedom and slavery for these birds was my motivation.

 Parrots take easily to the domestic environment. They are loyal, compassionate, mischievous and playful characters, the proportion of each ingredient varying between species. But they are proud. If taken from the wild, at any point in their life, they cannot forget it. No matter how loyal a pet a bird may be it will always find greater solace in the company of its own kind. If taken from their world into ours there will forever be a sadness you can perceive in their demeanour when they stare back onto theirs through windows or worse, bars.  In Bonaire to be taken is not into a life of luxury parrot lovers (should) lavish on their birds elsewhere. The bird will, almost certainly, not live out its life with free reign of a house or aviary, constant stimulation and a safe cage to retreat to at night or when scared. Instead it will always view the world through bars, often of cages no bigger than those used for ornamental finches.

To think of these six beady eyes viewing the world through steal glasses saddens me and hardens my resolve. I have visited houses here with captive parrots in such tiny cages. Played with the birds and watched their eyes light up and their wings tremble with excitement as a wild past companion screeches overhead, whimsically borne on the trade winds without so much as a down stroke from the wings. To think that the six tiny, emerald wings in the dark hollow beneath my feet would never stroke the deep azure above is unbearable.

Before climbing down to continue my battle with the camera I take one last glimpse into the hollow. A ray of light from the, by now, midday sun strikes deep into the black and in its glare two insignificant wings of emerald are spot lit and, feeling the warmth of the sky, start to beat, against all the odds.

The World Parrot Trust and Echo are committed to keeping wild parrots wild, regardless of their IUCN status. It is a cause I feel passionately about, as you may be able to tell, and so I am going to indulge in some shameless plugging.

The World Parrot Trust extends their support and expertise globally under the banner of the Fly Free programme, a campaign I cannot condone highly enough.

http://www.parrots.org/flyfree/

Echo has just launched a local anti-poaching campaign to extend nest monitoring efforts to help Yellow-shouldered amazons across the Caribbean and to buy far less infuriating camera traps to better protect Bonairean birds like the heroes of the story above.

http://www.razoo.com/story/Keep-Parrot-Chicks-From-Being-Poached

As a little uplift at the end I wish to also share this:

This was also a feature in last week’s blog post. This is the crested caracara fledgling. He still has not yet acquired the same fear of man that I have and alighted just 2 metres away one day this week as I was looking for parrot nest cavities in cliffs.  After a moment of shared bewilderment as we glared uncertainly at each other through a gap in jagged of coral rock between us, he tolerated me standing up and was quite content to watch me watch him.

The Dinosaur Reef

               There is an ancient reef on Bonaire. It has been building for millennia, calciferous shell upon calciferous shell of the coral stacking upon one another, steadily rising and crushing down on those below to form limestone. As ancient seas receded and the reef grew upwards it broke the surface, an Atlantis in reverse.  The reef was left high and dry. The very life that formed it was turned to dust leaving nothing but towering limestone ridges and the calciferous outlines of the homes once occupied by the coral and their algae tenants.

The Valley of Roi Sangu

Bowl of Fontein, the one natural source of fresh water on the island

For centuries the coral high rises remained exposed to the incessant wind and sporadic rain. The two forces conspired to create vast labyrinths of caves, crevasses and crevices in the limestone and jagged spires at the tops of the ridges reaching towards the blue of the sky. The wear and tear on the once grand reef covered the island in a fine dust, and on the unforgiving wind came the seeds of the first plants, falling into the dust filled cracks, gradually colonising the reef.

In the nutrient poor and water free reef (there is just one natural spring on the island, a mere trickle barely capable of filling a washing machine, all water is obtained through desalination or wells) the plants move slowly, the Wayaka (Guayacum officinalis), with its beautiful camouflage bark, taking centuries to reach the size of an English garden shrub. As the trees grew they took weird shapes, contorting in relentless wind, thickening their leaves and bark and sap to resist the scorching sun. In the odd nooks and crannies in the trees settled dry forest epiphytes, the orchids with their massive pseudo-bulbs to store any water that they encountered for leaner times.

The only known fully mature Wayaka tree (<1000yrs) left on the island after large scale harvesting of their self-lubricating wood for use in ship building

Dry forest epiphytes

 As the plants took hold the reef began to return to life. The dinosaurs that once moved through the blue above the reef returned. But not the dense boned aquatic lineages of the sea, the lightweight agile lineage of the skies, the birds. But life did not return on the scale it had once been beneath the waves, there are a mere 55 species of bird capable of surviving on this desolate rock year round, and a large number are introduced.  But these 55 come in all shapes and sizes. The minute jewels zipping just above the ground, only settling for an instant on flowers here and there before changing direction too fast to be followed; the splashes of fluorescence screaming their presence in sound and in sight; the savage hunters flushing the others before them in panic.

   

            

A common emerald humming bird female (Chlorostilbon meliisugus) settles for a moment

The fluorescent golden or yellow oriole (Oriolus oriolus)

A crested caracara (Caracara cheriway) takes this year’s fledgling (right) through life’s basics

Then there are the contemplative and playful. The parrots. With their curiosity and adaptability that allows them to exploit this harsh environment. There are two species: the Yellow shouldered amazon (Amazona barbadensis) and the Prikichi (Aratinga pertinax xanthogenia) (whom we shall meet later in more detail). They have made themselves at home, taking advantage of the ants drilling into impenetrable fruit of the callibash tree  and of human irrigation and cultivation of mangoes, papaya and plantains, chattering excitedly as they do so.  And like the morey eels that still inhabit the reef below the sea, they slink into the caves that line the sides of the ancient reefs ridges. In the quiet, coolness of the dark they nestle and nurture their families preparing them for the great blueness that still lies above the reef.

The Peninsula pair enjoying the sunrise at the mouth of Roi Sangu

The Retaking of Animal Farm

“Look, look there’s some”

He says in a hushed tone, squatting on the sun-bleached slope and pointing into the shadows ahead. The dog at his side, clad in a Kevlar chest plate and neck brace, strains at her leash and whines slightly, panting heavily. She is a sleek, Doberman-Alsatian cross, a natural born hunter with teeth and wits as sharp as the forest thorns. Her leash is nothing but a  piece of rope, looped through the Kevlar collar with both ends held together only by the man’s hands, more like a launch system of a weapon than a leash for an afternoon walk. Squatting down beside them my eyes can adjust to view beyond the wall of murk at the edge of the mango grove and squinting against the fierce afternoon sun I see the 4 or 5 pigs rooting through the detritus.

“Are you ready?”

The question breaks my distraction and I nod, feeling for the handle of the hunter’s knife strapped to my hip.  We move forward down the short, steep slope of loose, sandy gravel but the dog is faster and pulls the man so that he slides down the gravel. The sound startles the pigs and the dog gives a yelp of excitement pulling even harder than before.

“Go Serena!” the man shouts loosing one end of the leash.

The dog rockets off through the murk, the man sprinting behind her. I hesitate, everything happening much faster than I had ever imagined anything to happen. “Son of bitch” I mutter and sprint after the pair some 10 metres in front of me already. 

The pig group breaks, each individual running in an individual direction, screaming as they flee. Some double back, thundering past me no more than a few feet away, paying no heed to my own heavy foot falls.  

“This way!” The man shouts from the undergrowth ahead and I follow the barking, squealing shouting and snapping undergrowth.  We plunge through a bank of thorns, tear through an open gate and suddenly we’re on the road. Not pausing to check for any tourist cars or busses, just making the sharp turn onto the smooth tarmac hand on the hilt of the knife to stop it slapping my leg.

“Down here, she’s got it!” The man shouts from the road embankment, pointing down into a patch of forest emanating blood curdling shrieks and growls. He pauses just long enough to make sure I see where to go, then darts off in the direction of the noise.

I run after him, diving off the road and through a thicket only slowing as I reach the source of the commotion.  The dog has the screaming, kicking pig by the scruff of the neck, snarling savagely as she holds it, not intending to share it with the two late arrivals of the pack. I pause at the edge of the clearing. Lost in the chaos and held back by the wall of terror that surrounds the scene.

SSSSSSHHRRRIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKK “TAKE THIS!”SSSSSHHHHRRRIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEKKKK

I look down and he’s holding the back legs out towards me and I take them calmly, almost as if in a dream

SSSSSSHHHRRRRIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEKKK“LIFT THEM UP, GET ‘IM OFF HIS FEET!!”SHHHRRRRRIIIIEEEEEK

SSSHHRRRIIIEEEEKKK “THAT’S IT”SSSSHHRIIEEEEK “SHUT UP YA F*CKER” SSSSHHHRRRRiiIIEEEEEEEK

He stands on the throat of the pig exposing its chest. There is a blur of an arm and a flash of silver.

Suddenly, as if from a spring, there is a jet of ruby, vivid against the faded sun-bleached brown of the forest. No amount of film or video game violence can prepare you for the smell of fresh blood. The blood continues to pour as if it is a prisoner grateful for their release and the pig’s screams as an enraged warden after the escapee.  SSSSHHHHRRRRIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKK

His arm blurs 3 or 4 more times and in the whirlpool of terror that surrounds the scene I dumbly realise that there is nothing I can do. The animal is petrified. No kind word, no miracle of modern medicine, no action at all can ward off the death that I can feel hovering over, waiting like impatient customer at a diner.

No action is exactly what I take.

I just stand there dumbly while the animal screams murder and coughs and splutters, holding its still running legs, running to its own oblivion, watching the blood gleefully escaping and feeling as though I have let a guilty man walk free.

The pig lapses into silence.

The only sound now is the snarling of the dog, the pig convulsing in my hands as she tries to wrench it from my grasp.

“Serena, OFF, Serena, that a girl” the man sooths as he draws what appears to be a cuttlefish bone knife and inserts it between the dogs snarling jaws and prising them from the pigs neck, dragging the still lunging dog back from the pig.

 The pig falls still.

“Leave it here for the moment, we’ll get another one” he says hauling the dog off through the undergrowth. I stare blankly at the new corpse the shrieks still ringing in my ears and nod, turning to follow them back to the road.

“I’m sorry about that. That was a hell of a screamer.” The dog is trotting and panting happily by his side, remounted on her launching mechanism and immensely pleased with herself.

“Is it always like that?”

“No. That was a difficult one.” He says shaking his head.

We pause as we return to the bank of thorns, and this time make our way more carefully through them back into the mango grove.

“There, there, there!”

*Morons* I think. Why would they come back.

“You good?”

I nod again.

Again the dog flies from his side, whining in excitement.

Again the pigs break in all directions.

Again we crash through the slashing undergrowth.

There is the sound of splintering branches, a yelp, snarling with renewed savagery, but this time there is a new sound, a defiant growl from the pig. I duck under a low branch and step into a clearing barely big enough for the two struggling creatures before me. The man pauses beside me.

“Fuck”

The pig, a full grown boar, turns to face us; the only thing obscuring his malicious face from vision is the dog, desperately clinging to his ears. Both snarl and shake each other viciously. The man waits for a momentary lapse in their whirling dance and snatches the pigs legs.

“Steve!” he says holding them out to me. “She’s slipping!” He nods at the dog, holding on to the very tip of the boars ears.

I hesitate a second longer, but realising that to back down would mean serious injury for all but the pig I take the offered legs.

I haul them upwards flipping the boar off his feet and the man managed to pin his neck with a foot.

“That’s it! Got ‘im!”

Again his steal tipped arm flashes releasing another grateful stream of prisoners.

The boar doesn’t scream. He growls deeper and struggles harder.

“Fuck he’s Hard!” says the man, having to pound the knife through the animal’s toughened breast plate.

 The Boar makes one last bid for freedom, but he too realises there is no action to take and lapses into silence.

The dog tugs against me, trying to move the pig into the undergrowth for herself and the man can barely get the cuttlefish into her mouth to pry her off. “Bring her this way.” Without a thought the shear amount of adrenalin that must have been in my body I comply, hauling the pig and tugging dog a full 3 feet in one movement. (When moving the pig for butchering, long after the adrenalin subsided, it would take both the man and myself working at full strength to move the animal a similar distance.)

“Good girl” the man says as the dog is coaxed away panting and obviously pleased with her endeavours.

“We’ll have a break and come back” says the man.

As we return to the to the sun-drenched slope on which we started the man turns to the dog.

“Fuck”

“The fucker got her.”

I turn to the happily trotting god and see the blood trickling strongly from both a large gash on the dog’s leg and under the dog’s chin, her left pupil is also clouded out by blood.

“Fuck” I agree.

The man bends and scoops her up. She makes no complaint.

We walk hurriedly back to the shelter where we left our bags and water, the man gently crooning over the dog. We get back to the hut and he puts the dog down and tenderly removing her Kevlar. Again, she doesn’t object and settles on a cool concrete floor. The man goes to his bag and pulls out a dog first aid kit and the manual of dog first aid.

The next two hours are a blur of following instruction, pinning the dog so her wounds can be cleaned and stapled, of worried calls to the vet and anxious inspection of the clouding eye. As the motion swirls around her the dog remains calm, struggling against the most irritating of the disinfectants, only to be soothed and restrained again. Ice is fetched from the nearest shop and help against her eye rolling the clouds of blood back. Eventually she is released; sore and indignant but standing at the trailhead to recovery, looking accusingly at the anxious humans fumbling around her.

Post script:

The dog is well on her way to recovery. She wore a “Cone of shame” for three weeks and was cooped up indoors while her wounds healed. She is a sweet dog, but by no means over sociable. She greets almost no visitors to her house, regarding them with a passive eye from a distance once they are determined to be friendly. However, on the first visit I made to her after the incident described above she laboriously stood from her bed and padded over to me and stood a foot in front of me. She made eye contact and allowed me one stroke. She then padded over to another person who had helped in her treatment and repeated the gesture. She then returned to her bed, entirely ignoring the remaining 3 people in our party.