A Gift for Don Alvaro
When we arrived, Don Alvaro had just hosted a school group that morning. The macaws were already full of peanuts! He hosts as many as four groups per week now. He said there had been a sudden jump in requests for visits, and he’s not sure why. (Could it be the magic that pervades his farm?)
I became worried that my blogposts might have been part of the reason for the uptick in attention. I’m not sure it is, but this is exposure of a kind he hasn’t had before. I asked him if it was becoming too much for him. He said it wasn’t a problem (yet). But his first thought is what is best for the macaws. The modest fees he takes for hosting school and other groups go to making nest boxes, and a bigger jaguar enclosure, coming soon. He’s making a road now, and a pond in a low pasture for wild birds. Beyond that flows the river where the sunbittern sings. All this, and a sunbittern hopping from rock to rock just below the finca…the magic never stops.
So thanks to your generous response to my appeal, we had a very nice gift ($1,000) for Don Alvaro, and I’d written him a letter, which Mario read and translated as he went. We all gathered in the yard while the macaws dangled and played and the great curassow hen chased Jimmy our bus driver all over the place behind us while the “ceremony” was going on. I couldn’t see that happening, but my group was all stifling laughter even as they tried to be respectful and solemn. The joy kept bursting out.
Jimmy wasn’t wild about having a turkey-sized bird pecking at his calves. Who would be?
Go chase somebody else, you durn bird!
On the evening after these photos were taken, Don Alvaro came to Selva Verde, where we were staying, to thank me personally for your gift. Because he is a self-effacing and humble man, he did not look in the envelope I handed him. When he finally did, he got in his truck and drove over. He said nobody had ever done anything like that for him. He was very grateful. He talked for a long time, in incredibly rapid-fire Spanish, and Mario interpreted for me. I scribbled down what he was saying as fast as I could, but I know I missed a lot.
Julie Zickefoose is a painter and writer who lives on a nature sanctuary in Appalachian Ohio. She is the author of Letters from Eden and The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds With Common Birds, due in spring 2012. http://juliezickefoose.blogspot.com
Source: http://juliezickefoose.blogspot.com/2015/10/a-gift-for-don-alvaro.html
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