The Iguana Fest

I have tracked my path to my nest site: the location good, the soil moist, the river clear and swift-flowing. My excavations are almost complete. The eggs weigh heavy; it is time.

My tail is caught, I am hauled from my tunnel. There is strength; too strong for my writhing and flipping. My bite fails to connect, my thrashings ineffective.

Then, the pain is excruciating. My being centres on the blinding flash of agony in my claws. My limbs are drawn behind, shoulders burning. The pain returns ten-fold, a pin-like digging to my back. Just as I know it can go on no longer, the agony doubles, my hind claws scream, my shoulders burn, the prickling to the back once more. I am immobile. Every twitch causes fire throughout my body. My eggs! The urge to expel is overwhelming, but I am unable to push them from my body. I feel a tightness around my midsection, a band preventing breath or contraction. My mind dims, unable to comprehend what is happening.

I wake. Try to move. The agony returns, the tightness remains, my eggs press hard in my belly. There is now pressure from above; a weight on top not there before. There are human noises around me – a signal to danger, but I cannot run, cannot move, my limbs secured. I hear noises of my own kind; soft sounds of constricted agony. I twist my head as much as the pressure and pain will allow and there I see the awfulness of what is. I now understand the pain, the agony, the burning, the pressure, the futility of hope. Piles of bodies – my own kind, females, heavy with eggs, stacked like logs on the cement floor. Their limbs secured behind, the claws snapped from their feet, ligaments stretched to the limit and tied into knots – unbreakable bonds of their own flesh and sinew. A final insult - the useless claw dug into the leathery skin of the back as if agonies inflicted were insufficient. The bellies of the captives bulge with eggs that strain for escape against cords and bindings. Eyes wide with pain and despair, I know as I gaze upon these eyes it is as if I gaze at my own reflection in the clear pools of the river eddies.

Those eyes I watch blaze with hurt as her body moves, a blade flashes, the binding around the abdomen severs, eggs expelled in a flush of relief. Relief turns to agony, the final glint of a blade at her neck. I see blood, fear, pain and finally acceptance of death.

I watch purpose for life crushed as eggs are consumed; I watch hope for life diminish and fail in the eyes of my neighbour; I see disregard for sense in the face of my captor; I see futility in my own life and despair at its end.

And then I feel no more.

Horrible Hounds

This week has been one of sleep deprivation. In between the unseasonable thunderstorms, the (expletive) dogs have taken to nocturnal horse-bothering on a semi-professional level. I will shortly be getting t-shirts made - red ones for our lot and blue ones for the neighbours' dogs: please do not read political affiliations into the colours - they are just colours and they belong to everyone. (Always a tremendous source of amusement that immediately following a change of local government the public trash cans are over-painted with the new party's colours. In fact, 24 layers of alternating blue and red paint are probably all that's holding most of them together.)
Sorry - I have deviated from my complaint-track. Whilst the dogs are merrily chasing horses in that useless, floppy, grinning, oblivious way that only dogs can pull off, the local possum population have been advertising our hen-house as the latest KFC franchise. Feeling I had done my bit with the heron-proofing, I set the workers on possum-proofing the place. Wholly satisfied with their chicken-wire patches, I sent them home, waited til dark and, once all and sundry were safely roosting, quietly closed the door. Actually, I quietly pushed the door toward the door-hole, but there was no way it's warped little self was ever going back in that space again. Wouldn't you think they would have checked that...? I know, I expect too much. That cost me another chicken that night. No amount of gyrating and torch-pointing would galvanize my stupid canines into chasing it off. You could almost hear them: "no way man, it's dark over there". Useless lumps.

Anyhow, to happier things: the new aviary is at last finished. Woohoo. Its first resident was an aricari (Harry) apparently injured by a sling-shot. Lovely things, sling-shots. I think every child should be given one at birth. Very useful, not at all damaging to wildlife or the development of a child's sense of responsibility and morals. Harry recovered and was released yesterday. The aviary is now empty and ready to receive the Veloceraptors - who are now both flying, and biting, and nastier than ever. Veloceraptor 1 is rather adept at tucking into that area just below your shoulder-blades that you can't quite reach. Even though you know you can't reach it, it doesn't stop you spinning round trying - I don't know what I expect to happen - one day my head will stay still and my body will move to the front, so I can swat the little burger? Actually, no, that wouldn't work either because my arms would still face in the wrong direction...
Ah well, never mind - this time tomorrow they'll be safely behind bars. Better add little orange jump-suits to my shopping list.

The Birds and the Bees

The excitement of this week came in the form of a swarm from our bee-box. Not the first, but definitely the biggest. I watched them regroup on the usual tree before slapping forehead and running for camera. Hoping for dramatic shots of a swirling cloud, I waited, trigger poised. 20 long minutes later we were treated to a very blustery rainstorm, which failed to shake off the bees but instead encouraged them to cling on for hours whilst they dried out. You may be fascinated to know that during adverse weather conditions, tree-hugging bee swarms form very tight balls and layer their little bodies in a totally uniform direction, rather like furry wing-ed thatch. Clever little B's, aren't they? Anyhow, boredom eventually set in and I was miles from the camera, pinned to the sofa by a demanding cockatoo when they finally decided to take to the air. Cockatoo's are not something you can just fling off and apologise to later, hence the lack of bees-in-action photos.

I have my trustee assistant Jerry installing a shower for the parrots this week. And when the dry season decides to show it's ugly face, I'm sure they will be very grateful. We have also broken out the fag packet for the design stage of the veloceraptor enclosure (fags are British cigarettes, by the way - always have been, always will be, despite what the New Dictionaries say) We've watched the pertinent bits of Jurassic Park 3 times now and are weighing up the merits of an electric fence -just in case they manage to chew their way through the steel in the night. Speaking of which, if anyone knows the whereabouts of the container with the steel fittings in, could you please alert Builder's Hardware.

This has also been a week of discoveries:
We discovered that Belizeans still like to eat iguana meat, iguana eggs, hickatee, gibnut, deer... all protected, some endangered, some critical. We also discovered that no-one wants to make a fuss about such illegal practices as it is 'part of the culture'. As Jerry says, human sacrifice was part of the Maya culture, but you know, times change, roll with it.
We discovered that the survival rate of newly hatched ducklings by our lake is not good: a clutch of 20 can disappear at the rate of 4 or 5 a day until they are all gone.
We discovered that the Great Blue Heron has a penchant for newly hatched chicks. (repeat after me - all birds have a purpose, no bird is more important than another, every bird has to eat)
We discovered that TACA, our new dog gets lost easily. Those 3 hours were nearly as much fun as watching the chicks being eaten.

Jerry has still not finished construction of his hydroponics. I am writing this in the hopes that he is shamed into a rapid conclusion. I shall keep you posted. Literally.

Man v Parrot (match in progress)

I know I've been quiet of late. The truth is I'm a little embarrassed that my plans have been thwarted by one stroppy red lored parrot. January was supposed to be the big release of The Three Stooges (Bonnie, Kalie and Kleintjie) with all the media attention it deserved (well, 5 lines on our website at least). Unfortunately, every time I climb the ladder to open the door to freedom, I am dive-bombed by Mr P who regards the release door as the entrance to his personal fortress, and all those who dwell beyond it as potential intruders. I have to confess, I did not see that one coming.
However, not to be outdone by a mere bird, at this very moment our Chief Aviary Constructor is busy welding up two more doors complete with feeding platforms and ladder. Let's see Mr P guard that little lot. Ha, see, still the smart one. For now...

Somewhere in the Middle

I wish we had started this blog at the very beginning... but we had no idea that our lives would take this turn. Instead, the story will start 5 years on and we will probably regurgitate lumps of the past whenever events of the present day are too dull to recite.
To bring you up to date: we moved to Belize in 2004, started with 2 parrots (red loreds, for those of you that care) and realised that we loved parrots, that parrots love us (or our food, probably) and that, given sufficient time and care a captive, miserable wretch of an abused dying parrot can be returned to the wild as a healthy, happy, procreating specimen of its species. 5 years later we have cared for and/or released 34 parrots, 8 owls and several other wild birds and we are now just getting serious.
What can I say? Watch this space... and in the meantime check out the website: www.belizebirdrescue.com