Why is it so cold?
Carla plugged out her chilly earphones and huddled in a corner, fluffing up her feathers to keep herself warm. It certainly was a rather cold night, much colder than usual. And yet, there was no rain or anything similar. She grumbled as she got up and went to the entrance, looking out of the hollow. Nothing seemed amiss, nothing seemed out of place. The hollows were quiet, and everyone was in a deep sleep. It was like as if the lively area in the day had flipped over and changed sides completely. For Carla, it looked creepy, and she didn't enjoy the view one bit. She shivered one last time and retreated to her room. She turned on her iPod, and scrolled through her list of songs. The little light from her device illuminated her room with a soft light, and she winced a little as the bright light stung her eyes. She swiftly tapped a few times, and reduced the volume to a meager amount, and curled into a ball to try and get some rest.
"The World seems to be undergoing freak weather! Strange outpourings of snow or heat waves are hitting many areas, including snow in India, a drought in Malaysia and a much colder average temperature in Brazil and Peru..."
Tulio looked up from his newspaper and stared at the news reporter on the television set when he mentioned Brazil. He raised an eyebrow, and walked up to the door of his home. The moment he opened it, a gust of cold air rushed in, sending shivers down his spine. Tulio reeled in slight shock, and shut the door immediately. He murmured to himself, staring out the window. He plucked off his wall thermometer, and opened a window, flinching as the cold air cut into his skin. He quickly placed the thermometer on the window edge, and closed the window. He looked outside in worry, silently rushing the thermometer as the red alcohol within creeped to the rightful reading. If the temperature dropped more than five degrees, the Amazon was in trouble. But judging from the cold air outside, he knew that there was a high possibility that it was much worse than just five degrees.
Blu stretched as he yawned, and slowly crawled his way out of his room, and squinted at the brightness outside. He grunted as he felt something in his gut, like something was wrong, or out of place. For a moment, he tried to think about the problem, and soon he understood. He wasn't sweating, or feeling hot in any way. On the contrary, he could feel little goosebumps under his feathers.
"What the?" He murmured under his breath, fully noticing the freak temperature. He looked out of the hollow, only to see that the tribe was rather empty, with only a few macaws rushing in and out of select hollows.
"What's going on?" He asked Aa Roberto flew by.
"I don't know, it's freezing today," Roberto replied, slightly shivering from the cold. "Here, have some food, try not to leave the hollow today. Eduardo's orders." With that, Roberto dropped a few Brazil nuts into the hollow, and left to deliver more. Blu counted the nuts ensuring that there was enough for his family, and froze as he remembered. He didn't check on Jewel or the kids yet. Letting out a silent yelp, he rushed to his room to look for Jewel. She wasn't there, and normally, she would be on duty somewhere, but in the cold, Blu wasn't too happy about letting her go out. Forcing himself to forget about Jewel for the moment, he went to check on Tiago, Carla and Bia, only to find them all huddled in Tiago's room, with the sleeping peacefully. Tiago seemed to have an immunity to the cold, like Blu had, while Carla and Bia were more sensitive to temperature. Blu looked on in slight worry, and remembered something that he brought in his fanny pack. Since coming to the Amazon, Blu had been using it less and less, as it proved to be more of a hindrance in his lifestyle. Now, it seemed to be confined in a corner of the hollow, collecting dust and grime. He picked up the little pouch, and blew hard on it, causing a small cloud of dust to escape. He unzipped the bag, and rummaged inside briefly before retrieving a neatly folded piece of cloth. When the family was going from Rio to the Amazon for the first time, Blu had brought all sorts of things, including many disposable items, foldable utility items, cloth to make sleeping in random areas less unforgiving...
With a flick, he unfolded the cloth to its full size, which was nearly three times his width, and just as high as he was. Slowly and carefully, he placed the cloth over the children, and left quietly.
"This is not good. It is freezing cold, and the river is going to rise soon, and half of the food sources are going to be underwater," Eduardo was pacing around his hollow, occasionally fluffing up his feathers to keep maintain warmth. Roberto, Blu and Jewel were present, and each of them were exchanging troubled looks. It was the first time it was this cold in the Amazon, and frankly, it was going to be a large problem, especially if it gets colder.
"The jungle's ecosystem would be tipped out of balance," Blu murmured, attracting glances of question. "Many species will die, and any predators would be desperate to find food."
"Well that's going to be a wonderful addition," Eduardo replied sarcastically, clearly stressed by the new problem. Out of all of them, Blu was the most suited to cold environments, though the last few years, he had been in warmer areas, and his resistance to the cold had dipped a little. Due to that, the weather wasn't all comfortable for him either. It felt like the aviary back in Rio, when Tulio's friends visited. They would blast the air conditioner to a ridiculously cold temperature, and Blu avoided the aviary every time they were there.
"Guys, wait," Roberto butted in, squinting outside the hollow. "Do you see that?"
"See what?" Eduardo asked, tensing up at Roberto's urgent tone.
"Humans!" He yelled, pointing outside the hollow. Indeed, there were a few humans dressed in thick clothing carrying large sacks of items, climbing around the large trees. Eduardo's face seemed to drain of color, and he stared in worry as one of the intruders placed an alien object into one of the empty hollows.
"Wait," Blu said, staring at the humans. "Those are the humans from the sanctuary." He stated confidently, recognizing the symbol on their clothes.
"What are they doing?" Roberto murmured, trying to get a right angle to see what the human did to the empty hollow. As he left to go to another tree, the birds spotted a kind of lamp in the tree, which radiated a warm, crimson glow.
"Those are heaters," Blu guessed. "They can keep an area around them warm."
"Alright, let's go around and tell the others to not attack them. We don't want to hinder them if they are trying to help," Eduardo ordered.
"Move over, you're using too much of the blanket," Carla whined, squeezing under the blanket.
"You're in a tiny corner, why not go behind me? There's plenty of space," Bia stated, still busy reading a dense book. Carla wormed behind her, and dragged her iPod along.
"Hey guys, you're totally gonna like this," Tiago laughed, entering the room. Bia and Carla looked up, but didn't notice anything suspicious. Without any warning, Tiago dived under the blanket. Bia and Carla screeched as his icy cold body entered, and the three squirmed around underneath the blanket, with Bia and Carla complaining and Tiago laughing. A metallic clink caused the three to cease the mess, and peer outside the hollow. A curious object now stood in the middle of the hollow, and the temperature soon increased to a more comfortable amount.
"A heater," Bia commented, circling the device.
"The other hollows have it too," Carla pointed out. Nearly every hollow in the tribe had an orange glow spilling out the entrance.
"That's the last of them," a voice echoed throughout the tribe.
"Okay head to the next flock. It's around the rocks," another replied.
"That was strange and random," Tiago stated, staring at the leaving humans.
"It's probably the sanctuary humans coming to help," Bia explained.
"The heaters can help to simulate normal tempera... AHH!" Bia yelped as Tiago held her talon with his icy cold one.
"The bat tribe would go into hibernation, or simply encamp themselves within their cave because of this weather. If it continues, the plan needs to be changed," Crystal discussed. She and two others were discussing under a large ledge, which was partially protected from the cold weather by a few rock formations. It was where the tapir an the porcupine normally stood to provide commentary for the Pit of Doom matches. Upon the Outcast's occupation, the available spaces were turned into homes, and that particular space was a meeting area. Before the meeting, Crystal found that the area had the strange presence of many human devices. They glowed orange, but warmed the surrounding area. There was one in the middle of the meeting room, warming the space to a more acceptable temperature.
"We had an old plan before we involved the bat tribe. We could revert to it," one of the elders said. Elders in the Outcast tribe were much younger in comparison to the elders from other tribes. They were mostly a little older than Eduardo's age, while other tribe elders can be double the amount. The reason behind the difference was no other than because the Outcasts have a higher death rate.
"It is much more risky compared to the new one," Crystal said, not impressed by the elder's suggestion. "There was a reason why it is an old plan. There will be too many casualties if we used it."
"But in this temperature, even we would have trouble doing much," another elder reminded.
"Humans dumped these objects everywhere, and they keep an area warm," Crystal analyzed, staring at the heater in the vicinity. "We could use this temperature to our advantage. But we'd need someone on the inside. Fetch all the scarlets we have in our tribe. It's time to take a pick."
"Tiago, dump that on me, and I will be ninety-nine percent certain that you'll never see daylight again," Bia warned idly, flipping another page of her book. Tiago grumbled and brought Blu's drinking mug back to his fanny pack. Before he placed the mug back into the fanny pack, he dumped the cold water it contained out of the hollow, and watched in slight disappointment as the water didn't touch a living soul.
"Shall we go out?" Tiago asked Bia and Carla. The birds were sticking around the heater in their home, and were thus in close vicinity of each other.
"If you feel like freezing into a block of ice, go ahead," Carla replied, still grooming her feathers.
"Oh come on, you call this cold?" Tiago teased, knowing fully how his sisters disliked low temperatures.
"You'll be cold if I pluck all your feathers off," Bia added, clearly showing no intention of leaving.
"This is so boring, at least it would be more interesting outside," Tiago said. "What are you even reading?"
"It starts with an N and ends with an S," Bia replied, flipping a page as she did so. "None of your Business."
"Ha ha," Tiago grunted in reply. "I'll be gone for a while. Enjoy your boring activities." With that, he took off, and left his siblings in the hollow. As soon as he stepped off the hollow entrance, a chilly breeze swept by, blossoming multiple goosebumps in his skin. He hesitated briefly, and decided that it would be worth it.
"The groves! They have been stripped of food!" Roberto reported. In the fanny pack he held in one talon, one or two nuts rolled out. The gathering party consisted of five macaws who were relatively unaffected by the cold. Roberto was shivering non-stop a few hours ago, but after flying through the grove multiple times, and being exposed to the cold temperature, he soon got used to it, and his shivering ceased altogether. However, his face had an unsettling pale, and the shock of finding no food in the grove at all made it seem even worse.
"This doesn't make any sense. The grove has never run out of food before," Jewel mused aloud. She looked up from the ground briefly, and caught sight of Roberto's state, and was stunned briefly.
"Beto, are you okay?" She asked, getting more and more worried.
"I..I'm fine," he shook off her worry. "We have much more to worry about than my health."
"We have much more to worry about. Not you. Get some rest, stay near a heater," Eduardo ordered. Roberto opened his beak to protest, but pinched it shut, and nodded.
"What happened to him?" Eduardo asked no one in particular as Roberto left for his hollow.
"He may have exhausted himself, or maybe he simply can't take the cold," Blu guessed, staring at Roberto's figure as he landed in a hollow some distance away.
"Reassess the gathering team. I better not see another one sick like Roberto. For now, don't gather food until our stockpile goes below half full," Eduardo ordered before flying out to check on the tribe. Blu hesitated. He had no idea how to assess the group, and ended up briefly examining the group, judging by how pale each of them looked. Needless to say, he couldn't single anyone out.
"Okay, if anyone feels ill, don't continue. Head straight back for the tribe. No mock braveries, we don't want any casualties while looking for food," Jewel told the gathering team. Each nodded, and left for their hollows as Blu dismissed them.
"It will get worse at night, that's when it's he coldest," Blu told Jewel worriedly, staring out the entrance.
"We're getting along fine for now, it should be alright," Jewel reassured, but didn't sound too confident herself. "Worst case, we could all just head to the sanctuary headquarters." Blu dryly chuckled at the thought of the sanctuary staff opening the door just to see a whole flock of birds staring back.
"Oh come on, it isn't that bad of an idea," Jewel huffed, taking the chuckled as a disapproval of what she said.
"It's a fine plan. Just thinking of how the sanctuary humans will react," Blu calmed his mate down.
"We should check on the kids," Jewel recalled, and with that, the duo left for their hollow.
"This stockpile should last us long enough," Crystal stated as the last of her tribe members returned, with leaves full of Brazil nuts. The ferns growing at the bottom of the pit had huge leaves, ideal for use for transporting items. A small cave opening under one of the ledges was found some time back, and someone had the idea of storing food in it. Soon after the cold struck, Crystal ordered a large portion of her tribe to gather as many Brazil nuts as they could find in the groves. The small tunnel was nearly full of food, and yet from a distance away, seemed perfectly hidden.
Without the food, the tribes will struggle to survive. Within enough time, we should be ready to strike.
Crystal looked at some of the tribe grabbing a few nuts for themselves. Though many grabbed ridiculous amounts, there was more than enough for everyone, at least twenty nuts to one animal.
My tribe is fed, and the other tribes will be crippled. All from one action.
Just like killing two birds with one stone.
