As I leant down to reach through the low door for his food bowl, the open cave of my fleece must have looked very inviting. With no warning he scrabbled straight over to me and climbed inside!
I nearly crapped myself.
Panic! How could I contain him? If he dropped through the bottom of my fleece he’d be on the ground and away. And how sharp were his claws anyway, separated from the delicate skin of my stomach by only a thin t-shirt?
I dropped the food bowl and clapped both hands round my waist to hold the bottom of the fleece tightly closed. Then I risked a look down the neck hole.
A huge pair of eyes stared calmly back at me from the shadows. He’d curled up in the pouch created by me leaning forwards, and was peering out through the neck hole. I think he liked it there.
“Hey little fella, you scared me for a minute!”
The kinkajou said nothing.
“Wait till I tell Toby about this, eh? What do you think he’ll say?”
No reply. He just blinked at me.
“Well, I think you should go back in your cage, you know? Much as I like having you in there.”
He reproved me with those enormous eyes.
“Sorry! I’ve got to feed you though. And pretty soon it’ll start to smell in there…”
Nestled comfortably in his warm, dark den, the kinkajou had no intention of going anywhere.
I gradually bent lower, tipping the neck of my fleece back towards the open cage door. At the same time I moved my hands up, pushing the little beastie up and out. His head emerged under my chin. I could feel him looking around by the tickling of his fur on my neck. He must have taken stock of the options and realised there were none. Obviously sulking, he clambered slowly out past my collar and back down into his house. All of a sudden I felt a bit guilty. Surely this poor creature just wanted to be loved? Keeping my eyes firmly on him I scooped a big spoonful of food into his dish.
“I’ve given you a bit extra, okay?” I told him. He looked back at me forlornly.
“I’ll come and see you again at four. I promise.”
As if to show what he thought of promises from humans he turned his back on me and started rooting through his breakfast. What a loveable little critter. He was first on my list to kidnap when I had to go home.
Twenty minutes later, and only halfway through the feed, I spotted a wayward coatamundi making yet another bid for freedom. It had reached the patch of grass that lay in between all the cages. Rather stupidly they always chose to flee the same way. It certainly made my job easier, though God knows how they survived in the wild. At the grass it had paused, nose bending frantically, to analyse its new surroundings.
I picked the truculent fella up by the scruff of the neck and returned him to his enclosure. His blind mate was still stumbling about looking for the hole. I filled it with earth from the cage floor and stomped it down with my boots, but it was a temporary measure at best. If these guys kept digging eventually they were going to get away.
“Please,” I implored them, “not until Toby gets back!”
At least food would keep them occupied for now. I knelt down and dropped a ladleful of chunky goodness on their feeding shelf, expecting them to mob the bowl as usual. But the blind coati approached me cautiously, and began to snuffle around my face. This close I could see how the opaque disc in both little eyes nearly filled them. Poor critter! He twitched his long, bendy nose at me. Was there ever a valid evolutionary reason for such a bendy nose? Unless a comedy appearance ranked high on the list of reasons not to be eaten by big beasties. His nose was soft and wet, and tickled. I stayed perfectly still as he came closer. It was a moment of beautiful intimacy, being delicately probed by that long, slightly furry proboscis.
Then it was over and the nose retreated.
Leaving a great big glob of snot on my forehead.
Ahhh…!
Staring into the parrot cage was the closest thing I can imagine to being on an acid trip. It was a kaleidoscope of colours – huge red birds, bright blue and yellow ones, and darting around at high speed were flocks of smaller parrots of such a brilliant green it looked like they would glow in the dark. Everything was in constant motion, to the point where it was impossible to count them. Toby, when pressed, had put the number between twenty and thirty – give or take five or ten. Possibly not including all the small ones. Trees and planks and perches were everywhere. There were dozens of plastic bowls scattered around, some filled with filthy water, others filled with wet parrots. And if it was difficult to make sense of the view from the outside, inside was… well, it was an experience.
I hadn’t ventured more than a couple of steps into the cage when I felt something land on my head. I could feel tiny pinpricks as the talons sought purchase in my scalp, but it didn’t hurt as such. It tingled. By the time I reached the first empty dish I was already wearing at least half a dozen parrots.
The squawking was deafening.
“A lot of them were being kept as pets when they were rescued, so they’re quite affectionate,” Toby had told me. “Of course, some of them aren’t so friendly…”
Two of the fluoro-green birds were bickering over the best perch on my shoulder. I suddenly wanted very much to regain control over my head. With a parrot of indeterminate emotional state firmly attached I didn’t feel like I could move much. I really didn’t want to give him cause to hold on any tighter. Both my hands had parrots on them. As did my feet. In fact a red and green chap was trying to climb up my jeans using claws and his beak. I didn’t dare shake him off, but I also didn’t like the idea of him climbing my groin in the same fashion, particularly after he dug into my knee for better footing. “Oww!” The scarlet macaw on my other shoulder was pecking at my ear. Time to go.
I slopped food into every dish within sight and bent down for the huge water bottle I’d been hauling around. Tried to keep my body mostly upright as I did so. Bend from the knees! There was no longer a parrot on my knee anyway. He was playing with the zipper on my flies. By hooking the tip of his beak into the little hole on the end, he could jerk it up and down with a flick of his head. I had a horrible feeling he’d done that before. And been rewarded with a fat pink worm…
Run away! The dishes were clean, filled with cool fresh water. That encouraged a few birds to leave me, to fight for the right to bathe in their water dishes. Almost instantly there was a handful of clean parrots and all-new filthy water, which I grudgingly replaced. Claws were tightening in my scalp. About now I started to notice patches of wetness on myself – warmish liquid was trickling down my ear, my neck and my forehead. Realistically it was one of two bodily fluids; one of theirs, or one of mine. Neither was a comforting thought. So I made for the exit. I had to offer the parrot-laden parts of myself up to various areas of mesh surrounding the door, and most of my passengers reluctantly got off. They seemed to know the drill. But the big guy on my head wouldn’t budge until I walked out, running the top of my head along the low wooden door frame. He took the hint and clamped onto the wire above the door with his beak. A fairly angry screech followed me as I ducked out and dragged the door shut behind me. I patted my head and shoulders and twisted around to check the back of my legs for stowaways. All clear! What a relief. Nothing on my ass. And I wasn’t bleeding from a series of shallow head wounds. I had mixed feelings about that one.
Feeding the parrots had been one of my biggest worries. Just getting in and out without losing anyone was traumatic enough. But the cage itself looked as though two ten-year-old girls had put it together for a school project, and then run out of time and had to rush the ending. To put it another way, it was crap. I’d kept this observation to myself so far and was half expecting to pay for my lack of conviction by haemorrhaging parrots the entire weekend. Those beaks were so powerful and the cage mesh… tinfoil? If they didn’t get out sooner, they’d surely be gone later. But hopefully on Toby’s shift.
The rest of the feed went without incident. I don’t think I could have handled anyt
hing else! Every time I opened a cage there was a chance that its occupant would make a break for it. I had to open all of them in turn, a task which demanded the use of both hands. The only way to manage it was to place the enormous bowl of food on the floor between my feet, freeing my hands to work whatever bizarre system had been chosen to fasten any given door. Bolts, twists of wire, elaborate constructions involving wooden toggles, chains, hoops and latches – the complexity of the lock generally reflected the cleverness of the creature within. So with cage successfully opened, and my vulnerable body plugging the gap between occupant and freedom, I was then faced with the inevitable dilemma – the food bowl was still on the floor. I couldn’t pick it up without revealing that square window of opportunity for a few perilous seconds. And bugger me if the animals didn’t all know it! Whether they merited a clothes peg for a lock or something more suited to a bank vault.
All things considered, it was a fairly eventful morning.
It was going to be an eventful day as well.
Lesson from a Bright Spark
Work didn’t simply stop in Toby’s absence. It just became less comprehensible. With the feed finally over I presented myself at Johnny’s door, and was duly handed over to the gentle ministrations of Jimmy.
Jimmy, with an impressive though utterly unintelligible monologue, and much exaggerated gesturing with appropriate tools, informed me that today he was going to teach me to weld. Actually I think he was expecting me to weld spontaneously, as though I’d always known how to but had never really had the opportunity to prove it. I fervently wished for Toby to reappear before I managed to set myself alight.
I followed Jimmy into the garage, which he called the ‘galpón’, and watched as he switched the welding machine on. It was the size and shape of a battered fridge, and looked like it had existed in this space since before humankind crawled out of the swamps, coughed up green slime and breathed air for the first time. Jimmy didn’t seem to comprehend the phrase ‘health and safety violation’.
He pulled on a thick steel mask, knelt over one of the bars which were to become a door for our newly-constructed deer cage, and welded it. The machine buzzed, there was a massive shower of sparks and an intensely bright light for about half a second.
Jimmy raised his visor and grinned at me. Then he shifted over to another section of bar, lowered his visor and aimed his welding iron at the next target. Another deadly explosion of sparks and he seemed satisfied. “Good?” he asked, in Spanish.
“Sí, sí,” I replied.
So he dropped the welder, took off his mask and handed it to me. “Like that!” he said, pointing to his handiwork. “Careful!” he added. “Very hot!” And then he left.
I eyed the welding machine squatting lethally in the corner. I was supposed to just start using this thing? I edged to the doorway and glanced out. Jimmy was nowhere in sight. I had a nasty feeling he wasn’t coming back. The newly-welded metal bar was still glowing dangerously. An evil hum came from the ancient machine. I could tell it was taunting me. Death stood in the corner sharpening his scythe.
I’ve never been particularly good with electricity. I wonder sometimes if it’s got it in for me. I was eight when I had my first direct contact with electricity. We had our first computer – a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, the last word in home computing in the 80s. It was grey, it was sleek, and it had more processing power than a sandwich toaster, though not by much. All I wanted to use it for was annihilating triangular green aliens with my triangular green spaceship. Pretty much everything was triangular and green back then. My sister was more keen on an excessively dull spelling game, so when she finally offered to try her hand at saving green world from the triangular menace I leapt to her assistance. To start a new game we had to turn the computer off and on again. I gave the wall socket a damn good booting but the switch had long since succumbed to such violent treatment (so far we’d managed to conceal this act of destruction from our parents). It didn’t normally present a problem – all we had to do was pull the plug out. But man that was a tough plug! Like a gay man in the Iraqi army it had absolutely no intention of coming out. I pulled, heaved, hauled… no way. There was a very slight chance it had been accidentally-on-purpose glued in the last time I was on the computer. So I went to the kitchen and grabbed a fork.
In my defence, I was very young.
I stuck the fork in behind the plug and began to pry it out. I was doing quite well – it was about halfway out when the fork connected the live and earth pins and a massive jolt threw me across the room. I think I hit the far wall, stuck there for a moment, and then slid slowly down it like a cartoon character. Mum was less than happy when my sister’s screams brought her to the scene. How she got the fork out of the socket I don’t know, but she kept it as a memento of the very first time I nearly killed myself. It looks quite normal except for the middle, which is a melted, twisted black scar.
As I said, in my defence, I was very young. Of course I was a couple of years older the next time I did it. In my defence, I’m also pretty stupid.
There wasn’t anything else for it. I carefully picked up the welding torch by the slightly less red-hot end. I considered how completely unprepared I was for my imminent death. Then I pulled the mask over my face and looked at the metal in front of me. I couldn’t see a thing. The little window in the mask was completely opaque. How the hell was I supposed to weld? I opened the window and peered out. Aha! Now I could see what I was doing. I had to bring the tip of the welding iron in my left hand into contact with the precise spot on the metal framework in front of me. At the same time I had to resist the urge to brace myself for the fireworks by leaning on the metal – the welder worked by shooting a shitload of electricity through it and I had no guarantee that it wouldn’t fry me in the process if I was touching it at the time. I took a deep, calming breath, and carefully lowered the iron. There was a massive burst of sparks as the two metals met and annihilated each other. I cringed back and blinked frantically. The image of white-hot metal was burned into my retinas. It was a few seconds before I could see properly again, and even then there were purplish blurs dancing round the edge of my vision. So that was why the window in the mask was so dark! Bugger. Shaking my head in a vain attempt to scatter the sunspots, I resolved to be more careful. I closed my tiny window this time and lowered the torch again. I missed. Braced for an explosion, or a violent death by electrocution, I felt nothing at all. I tried again, waving the torch around in what I was sure was the right area. It was no good. Frustrated, I opened the mask window again to see what had gone wrong. Nothing much it seemed – I’d just missed the target by a couple of centimetres. No problem. I corrected my mistake and was rewarded with a blinding flash of light. My eyeballs cooked in their sockets as I squeezed them shut in reflex. The afterimage glowed before my eyelids like a miniature sun. “Arrrghh!” I gave voice to my pain and annoyance. “Mother FUCKER!”
Calm. Be calm, I thought. I have to master this.
Closing my eyes and breathing rapidly through my nose I swung the torch at its next intended target. By pure chance it connected squarely, and I felt rather than saw the resulting pyrotechnics. YES! Success. I had welded! Perhaps now I was a man. I risked a quick look at my handiwork. A big hole was all that greeted my streaming eyes. The same chance that had guided my torch into contact with the metal had convinced it to separate instead of uniting – where I had hoped to see two neatly combined steel bars I saw only a gaping hole in one bar.
The other remained untouched.
Triple bugger with a big chunk of bugger on top. And a side order of shit arse bollocks.
I was not happy. How could this possibly be so difficult? Squatting malevolently in the corner, the welding machine just hummed to itself in smug satisfaction.
It was the better part of an hour before I emerged from the galpón, admitting as much defeat as victory. I’d managed to create a half-assed framework, badly welded in almost the right number of places, and scarred, pitted and wit
h holes burnt in all the others. It looked like it had picked a fight with a pissed off dragon. But it didn’t matter, as I could hardly see the thing anyway.
Amazingly I’d resisted the urge to kick the stuffing out of the welding machine. I’d only have broken my foot. That thing was tougher and far more dangerous than me. Probably older. And possibly smarter. I collapsed in a stripy hammock on the front porch. I hoped Toby was having fun. Because next weekend that son of a bitch could learn a special skill while I seduced hot chicks in Quito.
An hour later I awakened to darkness.
Confusion was my first reaction. It was dark already? But no, this was something else, this darkness – the total absence of light; solar, electric, starlight – nothing. Aha! Because my eyes were still shut. Cautiously I tried to open them. Nothing happened. My eyes stayed tightly shut. Not a chink of light streamed in, though I could feel the sun warm on my face. I tried again with the same result. I couldn’t open my eyes at all.
My second reaction was panic. I groped around me for some clue to what was wrong. All I discovered was that I was still sitting in the hammock, and that getting out with my eyes shut was going to be bloody difficult. I eased a leg out and put my foot on the floor. Contact with the ground helped to restore my sense of normality. Okay, so I couldn’t see. I could still move all my other bits – just my eyelids seemed to be broken. I explored them with my fingertips and confirmed that they were still there. A small relief, that. It meant that there was a chance I could open them and restore my sight. I tried gingerly to push my eyelids upwards.
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