Toda história tem mais de um lado, meu nome é Tulio Monteiro e esta é minha história.
Every story has more than one side, my name is Tulio Monteiro and this is my story.
December 4th, 2010
Today my team and I made a remarkable discovery in the Caatinga dry forest roughly 2000 kilometers north-northeast of Rio de Janeiro, my hometown. My team and I were following up on some reports of illegal smuggling activity in this area of the South American continent. I like to believe that I am usually a fairly level-headed person, although I won't deny I sometimes get a bit overly-enthusiastic about my work, I'm an ornithologist or in layman's terms a bird doctor, I love birds and I have ever since I was a garotinho (little boy). Birds are fascinating creatures not only for their vivid colours and vast range of sizes and diets but for their intelligence it is in my experience and opinion that ounce for ounce some species of birds are as equally if not more intelligent than a 5-year old human and sometimes even human adults. Anyways, there is one thing however that sets my blood to boiling and that is illegal smuggling, I understand that for some of the poorer population the reals they get can mean the difference between life and death especially for those who have crianças(children) to take care of, but for others it is just about lining their filthy pockets with the ill-gotten gains at the expense of the lives of the wonderous birds that call South America home. The smugglers often use antiquated tools and techniques that often harm the birds they are capturing, which absolutely disgusts me. What makes it even worse is that there is no feasible way to possibly monitor the vast number of habitats simultaneously all year round, and if people don't start taking more action to protect these wonderous creatures they will soon fade to nothing more than dusty pictures in a book not even a memory. There is even some concern that a loss of this proportion would have ripple effects onto the rest of the "web of life" as it is sometimes referred to, humans included.
That is what makes this find so much more remarkable, we found a few feathers lying around a grove of mango trees that were a particularly bright shade of blue, almost teal in colour. Using my own unique method of identifying a birds species by tasting the feather(s), I couldn't identify it I thought perhaps we had discovered a new species, but when I checked the feather against a comprehensive atlas of known bird species including those known to be and thought to be extinct I made a life changing discovery. The feathers we found belonged to a Cyanopsitta Spixii also known as a Spix Macaw. Furthermore, based upon my experience in the field of ornithology, a fairly young female due to the light colour of the feathers.
December 5th, 2010
Today my team and I planned on catching this apparently lone female in hopes of bringing her back to the Centro de Conservaçāo Ambiental for further study and to protect her from the smuggling that has been plaguing this area. I know I was talking harshly about capturing birds, but our mission is not to garner fame or wealth, but rather to heal sick and injured birds as well as protect species that are having trouble adapting and falling behind population wise. The Spix Macaw is no exception, upon further research there were less than 200 left in the world according to the last estimate, which was a number of years ago so that number has probably decreased, I have reason to suspect that this might very well be the last young female of breeding age left, perhaps if I could find a healthy male somewhere...
To capture this elusive gem of the rainforest, I will refer to her as Jewel from here on for simplicity, we started by disguising our odors with a specially formulated spray that mimics the ground based flora in the Amazon and using an array of carefully placed cameras with anti-glare filters to avoid Jewel from catching site of them and fleeing and simply observing for the next several days her behavior and other general characteristics; being an ornithologist that does field work is not for the impatient or the faint-hearted. We agreed that once we figured out her general behavior we would slowly make efforts to locate her hollow and depending on a multitude of factors determine the best course of action from there.
December 10th, 2010
I love being in the field almost as much and sometimes even more than I enjoy being around my surrogate family at the conservation center, but I won't tell them that, I couldn't resist. Jokes aside, we have managed to find that Jewel is indeed a female probably between 10 and 15 years of age, which roughly translates to a human in the late teens and early twenties. She is highly resourceful and also fairly routine in her habits as far as we can tell, and she loves mangoes along with a variety of nuts and seeds that she gets off the ground. According to my guide, Spix macaws don't or I should say didn't eat that much fruit, but I guess Jewel makes an acception to that rule. Oh and apparently she also has a fiery streak, the other day a Blue and Gold Macaw (probably male) startled her as she was dining on a mango and although I know I will sound insane, but I could somehow just tell by his body language and the enunciations of his squawks that he was trying to put the moves down on her and she was not happy about that one bit, if he hadn't fled, there would very likely have been blood-shed.
December 11th, 2010
Today was the day that we were going to try and capture Jewel; we agreed that it would be best to attempt it early in the morning or late at night when she would most likely be sleeping, because even I am not so brave as to take on an enraged female macaw. I have had my experiences with unruly patients in the past, but I always get them to trust me in the end especially some of those that have to stay with us for long-term observation due to a serious injury or illness. I can't say how many rolls of bandages or bottles of pain-reliever I have used since I got my first job at the conservation center. Some of my team members suggested using standard procedure which meant using tranquilizer darts but I never really cared for those myself except where really large or dangerous birds were concerned; some might call me eccentric but even I know better than to try and handle an injured harpy eagle bare handed. I figured that the best solution would be to lure her into a cage in the early hours of the morning using her favorite treat, I know that sounds inhumane or cruel, but as far as I was concerned it was far less cruel than pardon the expression man-handling her and forcibly putting her into a cage. We set up a camouflaged cage fairly close to her hollow so that way she wouldn't get suspicious of a long trail of mango pieces and a simple slip knot on the cage door so as soon as she was in the cage (which was coated with a layer of the substrate to disguise it further) one of my teammates or myself could manually lock it in place from a safe distance.
December 12th, 2010 04:45:25 AM
Okay so much to our displeasure the set up yesterday took longer than expected. But now we just need to play the waiting game
05:00:09 AM
Still no sign of Jewel yet, hopefully she spots the mango chunks on the ground outside her hollow and goes to investigate otherwise all the time we've spent out here will have been for naught.
05:25:34 AM
Okay so Jewel has finally woken up, I can see her preening herself much in the way my mãe (mother) would brush her hair every morning before going out for the day.
05:27:15 AM
Jewel is resting on a branch outside her hollow, as if enjoying the relative coolness and calmness that one experiences at sunrise, as I myself sometimes do if I am not overly tired from a long previous day.
05:35:00 AM
Jewel is stretching her wings as if getting ready to fly; I am crossing my fingers (all of them) that she notices the fruit that we laid out.
05:35:25 AM
Excelente! She spotted the fruit and has fluttered down to the forest floor to investigate, she is approaching the first piece of mango slowly, her head cocked at a near 45-degree angle. She is now cautiously poking at the fruit with her hooked bill, probably smelling it as a mechanism to check quality and whether or not it is safe to eat. Like I said before birds are highly intelligent creatures.
05:40:05 AM
We got her, I cannot but feel that it is a double-edged victory however as she seems to be frightened by the sudden loss of freedom, I must say I don't blame her. Based upon our observations over the past several days I will have to be extremely cautious when I go to collect the cage so as to not unduly frighten her or cause psychological/emotional damage and by the same token not expose her temper.
05:40:15 AM
I was right about her temper, as I stepped out of the bushes doing my best to move slowly and not appear to be a threat all the while squawking and cooing softly in an attempt to make it known that I meant no harm, at first it looked as if she was either frozen in fear or uncertainty but as soon as I reached out to grab the cage I swore I saw a blue flame ignite in her gaze and she flung herself at the side of the cage nearest to me squawking and shrieking in a way that made me really glad that I was not a bird right now. Now I know that my colleagues tease me behind my back about some of my quirks, but the one that irks me the most is when they tease me about my talking to the birds, my response is don't people do that with other animals like dogs and cats? I've actually brought this up before and they always try to defend themselves by saying that's different, but I know better, my hypothesis is that if I keep it up, someday I could break through the lingual barrier and be able to communicate with them at least on a basic level. I am not so naïve to think that one day I will be able to talk to them like that fictitious English veterinarian or be able to talk with them and understand them like what they are saying exactly, but I could figure out how certain sounds or groups of sounds is associated with a behavior or desire like if one of my patients is hungry they will squawk and I would recognize the squawk as a hungry sound or something like that.
06:00:00 AM
Jewel has for lack of a better phrase pooped herself out from her fighting to escape, I'm glad I didn't attempt this later on after she had had a chance to fully invigorate herself, she probably would have given herself localized acute head trauma or caused other injury to her delicate internal systems and structures. Unlike American doctors (which granted I only have a passing knowledge about) I do not want my patients in the hospital for long periods of time, and surgery and other such procedures are only done in extreme cases or as a last resort, and medicine is only given to those who actually need it.
December 13th, 2010
We spent the remainder of yesterday packing up our gear and driving back to Rio, and then spent several hours filing paperwork the necessary evil that is also the scourge to conservationists and environmentalists. We have a special room at the conservation center that is designed to emulate as closely as technologically possible the natural Amazon environment with specialized humidity and pressure controls as well as an artificial sunlight system, plus near real substrate and trees that although technically artificial are the highest quality as far as realistic textures. I could easily go on for hours talking about all the special things that make our breeding center as that is the purpose of the room is for breeding couples in our care to be given as close to real as possible environment in which to procreate and raise their young one of the best in South America if not the entire Western Hemisphere.
December 20th, 2010
It has been one week since we brought Jewel back to the conservation center and placed her in the then empty breeding room to give her a chance to calm down and get used to the artificial environment, it has not been easy the moment we slid her cage into the access door and using a similar technique as we did back in the jungle one of my colleagues who had accompanied me to the Amazon suggested that we gas her just so we can avoid un-necessary injuries to ourselves or to Jewel. I refused for several reasons; Uno, that gas was for surgical procedures, Dais it is not cheap because we use a specially formulated anesthetic gas that is safe for avian species, and não we cannot use the same kind used in human surgeries even pediatric ones because the concentrations would do a lot more than simply put them out long enough for us to perform the surgery or give stiches if you get my drift, Tres,
December 24th, 2010
It is and