Backpacker Confessions: Girl vs Latin America: Bad behaviour from Chile in South America to Nicaragua in Central America. by Sizeland J

Author:Sizeland, J [Sizeland, J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-05-05T16:00:00+00:00

Animal Madness Vol 2

Let’s continue our wander through the animals of the rescue centre, starting with the creatures that I found the most menacing - the parrots.

I genuinely found the parrots to be more fucked up than the capuchins at times; they had all been abused so they had good reason to despise people. There were times when I really felt like they did hate people and it was hard to blame them. I know this sounds strange but the parrots attacked me on several occasions. I don’t know if anyone else has had similar experiences but I am sure they are cleverer than they appear.

An example of this happened when I was cleaning out one of the cages with Steph. The parrots went quiet and huddled together watching me apart from one that sat separately to the rest. As soon as I turned my back to scoop up some of their faeces this lone bird swooped down on me. It stuck its beak into my arm and twisted.

They have an iron grip so it was difficult to get it to let go. I whacked it with my trowel and it released its beakful of skin. From then on we had to have one person on guard to watch them and it always worried me when they were silent. I also had a scarlet macaw pounce on me in another cage but luckily it couldn’t get a purchase on my waterproof coat and slid right off me .

All of the invasive parakeets that we have the UK and in some European countries actually come from quite a small area in South America. Indeed the monk parakeet is one of the most invasive bird species in the world as so many of them are kept as pets only to escape or be released. Personally, I love parakeets as seeing them in my local park brightens up my day but I realise that isn’t that helpful to science or resident bird populations.

We also had a free-range blue and yellow macaw, which was unable to fly due to clipped wings. It was supposed to live in a designated tree but it would adeptly climb down so that it could wreak daily havoc everywhere it went.

His inability to get off the ground was of no hindrance as his favourite thing to do was try to bite people’s toes. He was more than capable of removing them from your foot with his powerful beak. This created the ludicrous situation where he would follow you in the sleeping quarters and take out chunks out of the bottom of the door while you either figured out your escape or wait for him to give up and leave.

We had an interesting situation when we had a male volunteer called Rob who was very good looking and all the rest of the volunteers were girls. Instead of the women going after him it was, in fact, the macaw that would chase him all around the centre.

The macaw would even follow him to the remotest cages where he would never normally bother to go.

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