The Rainbow Bird

Brazil, one of the most beautiful places to live. Amazing food, an active night scene and woman built from pure imagination. It’s everything a young aspiring farmer could want, but for every joy there is also a misery. Brazil boasts one of the highest homicide rates in the world and is currently ranked ninth for overall crime rate. It also hosts some of the deadliest animals in the world including anaconda’s jaguars, bull sharks and Brazilian wandering spiders. However, these aren’t the main attraction in Brazil. The bigger draw starts at tourists that bring in fourteen thousand USD yearly and ends with illegal smugglers bringing in a couple thousand and even up to half a million a year. The macaw.

In the city of Costa Rica 1990 at seven am in the middle of fall there was a girl who was given the name of Flor which means flower in English. She had black curly hair with red mixed in each strand. The red from her late father who was an exotic bird collector and the black from her mother a Brazilian native. Her mother sold fruit out of a stand and that’s how she would make ends meet. Flors father was a strong man and was proud of where he cam from (Honduras) saying it made him tougher. It’s also the place he found most of his contacts to buy, trade, sell and smuggle exotic birds. The trade was good and bringing home an extra thirty to forty thousand a year was pretty good too. Unfortunately, all good things come to an end, and they did when Flors mother found out she was pregnant. Flors father was attempting to leave the business. He had made enough to carve out a comfortable lifestyle and had to think about his future child, but they told him no. He begged and pleaded even offering them money to cover operational fees, but nothing eased their grip. At that point there was nothing to be said over the phone, and his suppliers asked for his presence in Honduras. Knowing what was about to occur they moved from Cartago to Costa Rica; Flors mother seven months pregnant at the time then picked up an alias instead of filing for divorce like her husband wanted and using his trade money bought a fruit cart. He stayed with her and his unborn for three more days following that, writing down all his secrets and findings throughout his lifetime. A month exactly before his child was born, he flew to Honduras and has had no communication since.

Flor was just born so naturally growing up she was curious about her father, but her mother was devastated. Losing her husband and best friend put a severe mental toll on her. Flor was six years old when her mother was diagnosed with depression. After that even at such a young age Flor was given additional responsibilities. She would go from school directly home to help her mother with the fruit cart. Help in this situation being very kind as Flor did everything for the cart except open and close it. That part her mother still did so Flor wouldn’t miss class in the morning and could do her homework at night. At the end of the day with everything accomplished Flor had some time to herself. She had friends she never seen because of the fruit cart, and because of that her bobbies suffered. They didn’t have a television or couch. The floor was linoleum and stained yellow with patches of black burn marks. The kitchen, living and dining room were one in the same so there was only a gas stove and one sink in the space. There was no storage and with only four plates and cups they didn’t need any. Their table was two pillows facing each other and were placed on the opposite ends of each other. The walls were deep yellow brown almost Dijon mustard colored without the spots because of the previous and active smoking within the flat; the bathroom was no bigger than a medium sized closet with no sink just a bathtub and toilet. The bedroom door is right behind where they eat dinner and after walking inside there are two beds the one on the right is full sized and the other a twin. There are no sheets on the bed with just one pillow each, and the floor is spotless given the space is tight forcing them to be as clean as possible.

What Flor did have was a book. An encyclopedia for that matter given to her by her favorite teacher Mr. Zillinger. He had sparked her interest in wildlife with his tales of adventure when he spent two weeks in the Amazon. Zillinger often spoke of tangling with jaguars and waking up to a Brazilian wandering spider on his chest, but his greatest feat was spotting a beautiful, endangered bird. They nest from January through April and only lay two eggs a year. Unfortunately, they nest in dead canopy trees and since they exist in such spectacular fashion, they’ve almost been trapped to extinction he’d say. Which is why it was so rare for him to lay eyes on two scarlet macaws the last day of his trip. The birds were so stunning no one said a word, and no one took their eyes off them as they flew effortlessly through the trees. The experience changed Zillingers outlook of nature, but also his own life. He returned home and started gathering any information he could on the bird. Even going as far as to ask around the city. When there were no answers for their preservation he was met with deadly force. Bricks were thrown through his windows, and eventually someone would try and take his life leaving instead with three of his fingers. After that altercation Zillinger became a teacher deciding instead to teach about the injustice of the world than change it.

In despite of that Flor still looked up to him; that was the only man she knew after all. He was a father to her and gave her something to focus on besides selling fruit and taking care of her mother. When Flor was sixteen her lovely mother killed herself by hanging. The bills were overdue, she had lost her only lover years back, and nothing in this world was important enough for her to stay not even her daughter. Flor found her on the tree in the back of her home. It was a Kapok tree that had been there since before she was born. At over sixty meters in height and forty-five meters in girth it stands alone as the largest tree in Costa Rica. Watching her mother hang there lifeless brought Flor to her knees, and she sat there motionless for hours. She finally stood up wiped the tears, cut her mother down and buried her with the great Kapok tree. With her mother buried, and everything on her shoulders Flor got to work. She went to school for the last time to speak with Mr. Zillinger. After hearing about her mother and seeing the viciousness lying within her eyes, he gave her his macaw journal which had everything she needed to fulfill her goal. They hugged and he warned of the dangers, but he most importantly told her that if anyone could achieve something truly great it would be her. She sprinted back for one more deep hug as Zillinger whispered in her ear that he believed in her. She closed her eyes mouthing “I know” and left.

Flor sold the fruit stand the next day and with money from it she bought a ticket to Mexico, and for the next two years in the heart of Mexico City she lived and gathered information on macaws. Every piece of new information was added to her book she received from Zillinger. She stocked up supplies, and finally made some friends with the same goals as her giving her detailed information about the topography of the area and most importantly poacher locations. The price for a wild macaw can range from two hundred USD to four thousand USD in the United States. Hunters catch the birds by tricking them into holes with fruit on them or crawl up trees to harvest their eggs. These dirty tactics enraged Flor making her obsession for her goal more intense. Her newfound strength made her magnetic to the people and her once small group turned into a full blown medium sized militia. At eighteen years old Flor was ready to accomplish her dream. Weapons, knowledge, people, and passion set the stage for the largest animal rescue and rehabilitation story in history. The plan was simple, transport the team to a highly sought-after location filled with macaws, and send the poachers a message. The short-term goal was to annihilate as many macaw hunters as possible. The long-term goal… rehabilitate the macaw, save the birds, at any cost.

Albeit having a good plan alone isn’t enough. War changes people, and its hard which, is exactly what Flor found out when war over the macaws began. Flores troops started with six months of easy victories, because of their guerrilla warfare tactics, but the poachers started fighting back. Not only was this their living, but they had real money coming in to supply them. It got ugly… there were trip mines, tiger traps, soldiers were being lit on fire causing collateral damage to the forest, and since this war was fought over things the public eye can’t see it had to remain secret. Meaning there was no way to discard the bodies properly both sides took to burying them in mud swamps or throwing them in the river to get rid of them or feeding them to wild animals. Two years in and the war was in shambles. Most of the men and woman had forgotten what they were fighting for and with parts of the forest burned or reeking with the stench of rotting corpses it seemed like a stalemate. Flor however knew they had won. She had been sneaking macaw eggs and saving as many adult couples as possible. Keeping them in tropical heated vans and transporting them to new covers far away from the war zone and all poaching sites. Once there she had troops fill the area with human traps so no one could return not even her. With the macaws safe for the long term their inevitable population growth was insured. It was over, at least for Flor and she and her remaining troops went home, but for the poachers it would never be over. They had been embarrassed but not only that, they had lost a huge part of their business forever.

Mexico City is full and interconnected through its black market. The war may have been silenced to the public, but everyone knew Flor now as the macaw mistress, and she would pay dearly for it. She had only been back for one year, and the day after her twenty-first birthday she was shot in broad daylight. She became a martyr, a symbol of determination and love. In her honor they opened a macaw museum allowing people to learn and see macaws through virtual reality. There was also a new species discovered through drone research five years after her passing. They called it the flower macaw after Flor because of its ability to molt and grow a new flower pattern every year. The macaws will live on with no fear of being hunted to extinction, and Flor will live on through them.