BITING PARROTS AND A GHOST
But don’t worry, everyone still liked Myrtle best, including the little green parrot Bunty that talked its head off as it kept us company at our second camp in the Amazon jungle.
Myrtle used to talk to it and coo at it and in general make a fool of herself over that parrot, and I swear that little thing preened for her.
Sometimes when it had received its surfeit of adulation and had happened to notice that I was engrossed in my camera or a book, it would wobble over to my tea, yes, MY tea, never Myrtle’s, and start slurping it into its beak.
Then it would raise its head prettily to let my lovely tea slide down its evil little throat, Myrtle, of course, watching in rapture and trilling about how absolutely adorable and CUTE that little thing was, all the while sipping her own lovely tea.
And she did not even offer to go get me fresh tea! Surprise, surprise!
I think she must have talked bad about me to that parrot, because one day when we returned to camp and I was walking up the short stairs to the recreation pavilion for afternoon tea, I looked over at the little thing and said, “Hi, Bunty.”
And what do you think that little devil did? It shot its beak out and BIT me, yes, bit me right on the shoulder, where it left a triangular chunk of skin hanging loose.
I sort of shrieked, because I could not believe the effrontery of that little thing, taking a bite out of ME, who was only about a gazillion times bigger AND I had opposable thumbs!
The guide was in the rec pavilion and located a first aid kit. He applied an antibiotic and a band aid, assuring me that the parrot was not rabid.
You know, I was not even holding on to the banister when Bunty bit me! What unmitigated gall he had! I guess that little devil considered those stairs his private domain, his and Myrtle’s.
I stayed away from that particular set of stairs thereafter.
I really should have read him better, I guess. From the day we arrived, he seemed to delight in perfectly mimicking my laughter. It got so bad I was careful not to laugh when I was around him.
But that didn’t help either. One day I heard him laughing my laugh while I was just getting out of the boat down at the dock. How could he even SEE me that far away?!
You know – I don’t think I like birds that are that smart. I wished I had some Gobstoppers to stuff into his malicious little mouth.
I liked the big macaws the best. At least they were big and had gorgeous plumage. They didn’t drink my tea and they didn’t bite me,
either. The camp staff kept them too well fed.
The bird I liked best next to the macaws was the caracara that took up residence in one of the hammocks on our open porch. That bird was so laid back that I often wondered if it were dead.
People told me it was a bird of prey and to stay away from it because it was aggressive, but I never once saw that caracara move. I even started to wonder if it were a stuffed bird placed there to keep the rest of us away from someone’s favorite hammock.
Yes, we had favorite hammocks, and Myrtle and I occasionally fought over the one we liked, which seemed to be hung strategically in the best path of the hot breezes that sometimes broke through the jungle miasma.
There were several animals that hung around our camps, including a capybara, a sort of scary 2 ½ foot long iguana, and a large tapir with a really long snout that seemed to be always sweeping the ground inspecting for food. There were also some monkeys that had become pets for the staff, who kept them well-fed with bananas.
The thing Myrtle was most frightfully afraid of was snakes, and she made a total pest of herself asking our guide if we were indeed safe from those slithering creatures.
No matter how many times he assured her that our camp was free of snakes because the camp kept a dog, she startled and woke me at the slightest strange noise in our roof thatch at night. She was a royal pain to tell you the truth.
For the record, as our guide informed Myrtle, the only poisonous snakes in the near vicinity of the camp were the Bushmaster, the Botrox, the Coral, and the Fer de Lance.
Unfortunately, Myrtle had already made it her business to find out that there are six to eight snake bites in this area every year, and that the Fer de Lance is one of the deadliest snakes in the world. OK, so much for reassurance and stress reduction.
I happen to like snakes personally, not necessarily those that bite me, but in general, you know.
However, I did draw the line at trying to scare Myrtle about snakes. After all, who would travel with me if she had a heart attack and died on me?
That nearly happened the first night we were at the camp, before our guide had had a chance to tell us that the camp kept a dog precisely to scare off snakes. And it wasn’t a snake that almost did her in, it was a ghost.
A great surprise to me was that my Myrtle was the first of our group to succumb to Pachacoutek’s Revenge. I thought that her talented imbibing might have pickled her insides enough to prevent those little squigglies from wreaking havoc.
But Myrtle just adores fresh fruits and vegetables, and when, on our first day in jungle camp she spied those platters brimming with all manner of them, an absolute picture postcard advertisement for what healthy fresh food looks like, she nearly swooned.
She had three or four helpings from the green salad bowls and several more helpings from the frui platters.
Because the night was heavily overcast, we could not take our scheduled star-gazing tour, and the camp staff brought out their drums, maracas, a guitar, and some bottles of rum and soda; and we proceeded to have a Latin Dance party.
I was a bit surprised that Myrtle did not immediately become the life of the party, but I became too engrossed in watching the camp dishwasher doing a scorching dance of something or other that had my feet twitching and tapping like slightly insane independent appendages.
Indeed, the dishwasher actually came over and held out his hand to me to join him on the dance floor. BE STILL, MY HEART!
Well, I can’t say I burned up the rug then, certainly not like Myrtle had done in the Galapagos, but I gave it my best shot, and I totally ignored any titters from the group when my long legs seemed to get tangled up in each other.
Strangely, Myrtle did not dance even one dance, but I was too in love with that handsome dishwasher to give her much thought.
That night Myrtle’s insides started having their own noisy party. She found herself in dire need of the facilities.
Unfortunately, in that camp the facilities were outhouses on the far side of the camp, with doors facing the jungle.
So about 2:00 am that night I heard Myrtle frantically unzipping her mosquito net and shussing her bare feet on the wooden floor hunting for her flip-flops. Then our cabin door opened quickly, rustling the thatch on the roof and eliciting a tiny whimper from Myrtle.
After the door closed, I scrunched my eyes tight and tried to imagine I was parched in a dry, dry dessert.
My bladder was having none of that; it wanted to join the party.
So I untangled myself from my sheet and mosquito netting, found my slippers, and strapped on my headlamp, turning its light to infra-red mode because someone in my distant past had told me that infra-red made for better night vision.
There were a few smoking smudge pots and primitive tiki torches along the boardwalk, but the night was so overcast I had to pay attention to where I placed my feet, which was an exercise in guesswork if the breeze happened to blow the smudge smoke across the boardwalk.
Even my bladder was sufficiently engaged and interested at that point that I considered turning back and crawling safely back into my mosquito-netted cot.
Meanwhile, Myrtle, it turns out, had found the outhouse, had even remembered to take her toilet paper, had already done her business, and was leaving the women’s outhouse when suddenly this black animal the size of a large dog came out of the jungle, coming right toward her.
Her vocal cords seemed to freeze up, she told me later, and all she managed was a wimpy squeak as she ducked back into the outhouse and started to slam the door.
Fortuitously, just before the door slammed shut, the animal passed a dim torch and Myrtle saw that it was a dog.
When her heartbeat slowed down sufficiently, she left the outhouse and started walking back up the boardwalk, faithful dog following, her nerves all ajangle.
By that time I had progressed slowly and carefully far enough that Myrtle and I met at a corner just as a good breeze came out of the jungle and swirled my white nightgown out and around me in a billowing dance and I emitted a startled squawk, which seemed to come out more like a low moan, unfortunately.
As Myrtle later told me, all she could really see at that moment was this swirling white thing with one red eye, moaning, with the smoke from the smudge pots swirling around it.
The dog must have been equally startled and confused, because it sort of ran into Myrtle from behind, and I guess the combination of that and the ghost swirling around in front of her, was just all a wee bit too much for those jangled nerves.
Something deep inside Myrtle snapped, and her mouth opened with a screeching howl of such stunning magnitude and length that even I was stopped dead in my tracks with my mouth hanging open.
In an instant all the night jungle sounds ceased, and in the ensuing profound silence lamps started popping up in the campsite. I heard a few moans and whimpers.
Just as our guide showed up with the camp director, who was holding a shotgun and pointing it straight at ME, which was certainly not fair, I thought, Myrtle and I realized who we were and grabbed each other and jumped around like maniacs while we babbled and cried incoherently. When we finally regained our wits, we saw that the whole camp had found its way to that corner and was watching the show.
Well! That was embarrassing!
To be continued…