Que tal, quetzal?

From when I was born until I was 3-1/2, we lived in NJ and got FEET of snow in winter. My parents hated it. I was confused by it. Why did they hate that pretty stuff?

Snow was just a fact of early life. I "unlearned" that fact after my folks transplanted us to Dallas. Growing up in NE Texas, snow was the enemy, and ice was a more common enemy than snow. Both were dangerous to drive on and people acted like idiots when either precipitated and remained. Winter in Texas was mostly after Christmas and it was mostly dry nasty cold or wet nasty cold, but not that much ice or snow nasty cold. I liked the cold, but everyone else in the family thought cold was nasty. Thanksgiving and Christmas in NE Texas were, as often as not, crisp and chill, but not cold. They were at least cold enough that decorating a tree or wearing overcoats and a winter wardrobe weren't out of place.

For a couple of years during highs school, I was living where Christmas comes at a warm time of year. Both of those years, my aunt and uncle took us to the Llanos for Christmas. Bogota Colombia is high in the Andes and even "summer" isn't particularly warm. For Christmas, my uncle liked to go to the lowlands, to a town called Fusagasaga because there are these hot springs there which are reputed to be very good for what ails one. One supposedly both drinks the mineral water from the hot springs in Fusa and one sits in the hot springs, boiling like a knockwurst in the water which is even hotter than the humid tropical air of the town itself.

I didn't like Fusagasaga except for the hotel in which we stayed.

It was the first hotel I'd ever been to in my life in which you had to keep the toilet paper on the dresser, because you could sit in the toilet and have a shower at the same time. The showerhead was in the middle of the room. The bathroom light was a bulb encased in an outdoor style fixture which didn't allow water to get into it. The beds were saggy soggy thin mattresses on thin metal strips, with spotless sheets and worn out cotton pillows, BUT there were hammock hooks and a hammock slung on one of the two hooks which one could use instead. And boy those hammocks were comfortable, airy and a lot easier to sleep in than the beds!

However, what made the hotel spectacular were the parrots. The owner of the hotel had a few dozen macaws at the hotel. I think that originally they had been captured or hand raised and kept with their wings clipped, but they had the run of the joint and they flew, so they were no longer "captives" birds.

And they were both pestiferous and wonderful!

That first Christmas in Colombia -- and the next -- I sat in 119 degree sulphurous water in that resort in the Colombian lowlands outside of Bogota, drinking Fanta or cold beer. The air outside of the springs was 103 and humidity outside of the baths was 85%, so there wasn't much difference between being IN the springs or out of them.

I fed most of my breakfast to the macaws at the hotel every morning, and spent most of the day with the parrots chewing up everything of mine they could get their claws or beaks on, happily yelling at me in Spanish, and joyfully soaring from perches to my back or waddling around after me, when they couldn't hitch a ride on a forearm from place to place, because they knew I'd cadge fruit for them from the kitchen help... and I did. I fell in LOVE with 1 to 3 pound birds in loud vibrant feather suits with even louder voices, distinct personalities and a surprising range of behavior.

I siesta'd with macaws. I lunched with macaws. I sang Christmas carols to macaws. I got groomed by macaws. I had macaw crap in my hair. I lost a sandal to macaws. I had enough dropped feathers from macaws to make a full fan.

I shared my salad, bread, fruit, fruit juice, lettuce, fried plantains, potato chips, peanuts and yucca with macaws. I showered with macaws if I let them in the room, and I did. Macaws pulled things out of my purse, gnawed holes in letters, dented and punctured post cards, and snapped pencils in half. Macaws climbed the juke box and sang along with selections people made of music in it. Macaws clung to the nets on the tennis courts, chewed up the pingpong paddles and fought one another over pingpong balls.

Macaws unwrapped my Christmas presents. Macaws were my Christmas presence. For years afterward, I'd think in vivid blue and red and gold, when Christmas came around, not in red, green, gold and silver.

You haven't lived until you wake up in a hammock on Christmas morning with a one macaw on your chest shitting on the sheet and trying to pull it off your arms and another hanging upside down clinging to the mesh your butt's in flapping his wings and yelling "hola! Que tal, quetzal?"