Mirage 2012
Taurus and appreciated that large stubbornness in such a small feathered package. I sat down again in front of Peaches’ cage, cocked my head avian style, and murmured, “Hi, Peaches parrot. Beautiful green Peaches parrot.” Cocked the other way. “How ya doin’, Peaches? It’s all right.” His silence and posture said it all: Yeah, right, lady. Everything’s just dandy. Maybe he doesn’t like the name, I thought. “Peaches” seemed a cheap-shot moniker to pin on a peach-fronted conure. I was just using it as a placeholder until his real name suggested itself—perhaps something classical (Apollo?), exotic (Teotihuacan?), or hippy (Starflower?). “Peaches” was at least unpretentious and had the advantage of applying to either gender. Male and female conures look alike. I supposed that calling the bird a he was some kind of sexist default. At least it gave me a fifty-fifty chance, better than Wall Street or Las Vegas odds. By whatever name, this little parrot had no reason to trust me or any other human. Magazine articles and television nature shows helped me piece together a rough scenario of his capture, probably in Brazil. If he was caught as a baby, his captors either hacked into his nest cavity several feet up in a termite mound or chopped down his tree. Half his siblings might have died in the raid. If he’d already fledged—left the nest—he would have been caught in a net or on a glue-smeared branch. He might have struggled for hours or days, vulnerable to predators, starvation, and dehydration. Peaches and any other birds who survived the rape-and-pillage approach to parrot catching would have been thrust into dirty cages, transferred overland and by boat, and flown to the United States in a cold cargo hold. Their food would have been the cheapest available and anything but fresh, their water contaminated with the local parasites, bacteria, and viruses, and with the birds’ droppings. Fewer than half the captured birds would have survived to enter quarantine in Chicago.
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