Spread your wings

Throughout my childhood I had several run-ins with parrots — and sadly, some did not end well. In the nineties, keeping caged birds was very much in fashion — I think because of the narco influence — and many people wanted a small "Hacienda Nápoles" of their own at home.

My first memory with a parrot was the time someone brought a small parakeet to my grandmother. He was the darling of the house, kept prisoner in a chick cage. He came with us even on outings, because leaving him home alone with the black cat was too dangerous. One afternoon, I was at the riverbank with my cousins enjoying the water while an uncle watched over the parrot up on the bridge. Then a drunk man stumbled into him, and the cage went into the current. My uncle screamed so hard his false teeth flew into the river. You could say he lost the bird that day — and his smile too, since neither one could be recovered that afternoon.

Another ill-fated episode with these beautiful birds happened some time after the river incident, at Aunt Olga's house. I was maybe five years old, and in those days I had just gotten a pair of boots I loved — the kind that made me feel I could walk the whole world: jumping from here to there, on the furniture, on the tables, and finally on the stairs. But at snack time, my aunt noticed her little blue-and-white-headed parrots were not coming down for their agua de panela and cookies. Going up the stairs, she found them crushed on the second-floor landing. I have to say I had not known those parrots existed until I met them already dead. I felt very sad and very guilty.

I remember that, somewhere in the middle of childhood, I started modeling birds out of clay. I made them in many colors and without cages — maybe searching for some kind of catharsis? Time passed, years passed, and not all the stories are sad: in the center of my home's patio there is a large mango tree, and every time it bears fruit the parrots throw a party. They live in the neighborhood's trees; in all their commotion you can barely see them — camouflaged among the green leaves — but they announce themselves with their shrieking and whistling. Then they drop the pits, clean of all pulp, and so every year more come, because the fruit trees are growing scarce. Progress turns house-lots into five-story buildings where there is no longer any room for green.

Years later, I met a woman who was passionate about birds, and we were together for a while. I remember that in one of the neighboring houses there was a caged blue macaw; every time I visited her, on those endless evenings on the rooftop where we would go to watch the stars, we heard the sad cries of that animal, vocalizing meaningless words, longing to be one of the parrots we watched fly free at dusk. They would return from the foothills, settling in the high crowns of the guayacanes before nightfall. Neither of us could bear that injustice, so we agreed we had to call the environmental authority to rescue the bird. And that is what happened: thanks to our persistence, CAR Cundinamarca came and took him to safety.

I remember that feeling of triumph from doing the right thing. Some time later, I gave her a bird as a gift — not a real one, and not clay either — but one I carved from wood, built so that turning a crank made the bird beat its wings... a keepsake of that small victory for freedom.

A few years later our relationship ended, and although it was painful, in a moment of clarity I understood several things:

What we love and admire must not be caged, because it can perish miserably — like the parrot in the river.

Sometimes, without meaning to, we cause harm — the way I did as a child with my boots, stepping on those parrots.

The greatest act of love is letting go.

Even though I never heard the blue macaw again, or watched the sunset with the bird girl, I like to think that both of them are happy and free.

Analysis and reflections from Fundación Loros

The story of "Spread Your Wings" reminds us that the bond between humans and birds is born from wonder and affection — but it must not become a sentence. In his childhood, the author lived through terrible losses: small parrots drowned, crushed, victims of innocent games or avoidable accidents. From that pain came a longing for catharsis — sculpting birds in clay — and, as an adult, genuine joy when the mango trees in the yard draw in the flocks.

His romance with a young bird-lover ended in a rescue: calling the environmental authority together to release the blue macaw. It was a triumph built on collaboration, not impulse. The figure of the wooden bird — with wings that beat as you turn the crank — evokes the freedom earned through patience and commitment.

Lessons

Parrots are not gifts or toys, and children are a serious risk to parrots without supervision. At Fundación Loros we have heard many stories of parrots who died in children's hands — treated unconsciously like toys, or lost to error and carelessness.

Reporting and taking action — through the environmental authority, through professional rescue — is the ethical path to protecting these species.

In the end, birds belong to the jungle, to the forest: their place is the air and the foliage, not cages or our whims.