The Climb
It’s been a grueling schedule. Late nights for design projects. Long hours of travel to work. Manual labor. But I cannot complain. Nor do I want to.
It’s dusk and the sun is dipping behind the mountains. I am on one. A mountain. Our restaurant here at the park overlooks the sea. After a long day of changing the perches of birds, switching birds to more appropriate cages, tending to our gardens, etc., I am eating a humble dinner alone but the chimes tinkling with the caress of a breeze and the murmuring of the birds roosting makes it a feast. One of our peacocks struts idly by to roost and doesn’t even bother to nod good night to me. I do not mind. All day he’s been displaying his tail and he has earned the right to be a snob.
Our perches have been chewed out. Parrots, being incorrigible chewers, will not stop chewing even if their lives depended on it. In fact some parrots have died because their owners have not been vigilant about poisonous branches being made as perches. In the wild, it is theorized that parrots get away with chewing on poisonous branches, fruits, and leaves by swallowing clay and other types of soil to neutralize the poisons they have ingested. In captivity, clean sources of clay and other types of soil is not always possible so the elimination of poisonous substances are a prime concern. This makes the replacement of perches more difficult than just putting in new branches. One has to know which plants are not poisonous. You’d be surprised how many plants are poisonous. Even the benign looking acacia is one. Some things that are not toxic to humans are toxic to birds. Green mango which we enjoy so much mustn’t be given in large amounts to birds. Tannic acid can accumulate which can result to sever poisoning. Add to that the problems of aesthetics. Some branches, even if safe are just plain ugly.
Garbage collection has been one of the problems I had to contend with when I inherited this job. Years of mindless littering and dumping by the employees and visitors have covered the mountainsides with horrible unsightly garbage. Lately, after one of our major problems have been solved, clearing the mountainsides of garbage has been one of my priorities. Our boys hang by ropes along the mountainsides and collect the garbage into a can tied to a rope. It has been slow progress with only our resourcefulness to use in place of proper equipment but progress there has been. Today, I was following a trail of litter which led me into a forest when I saw a wild boar going through a garbage bag. I wondered how a black garbage bag got deep into the forest when I saw my answer. A trap. It has been set so that a wild pig will root through the garbage inside and not notice the trap it was going into. The metal screens were from the park, so were the plastic screens covering the whole trap. I was relieved that the wild boar wasn’t trapped but was distressed that one of my people may have set the trap. After calming myself down, I made inquiries and found out that the forest rangers themselves have set the trap up. I told them to dismantle the trap and collect the garbage from that place. How very Filipino. The very people tasked to prevent hunting are the ones who hunt. Typical.
It rained the other day. You can almost hear the plants happily sighing at the sun’s leave-taking of the sky. It’s amazing how much leaves have grown with one night of rain. It’s like they have been waiting impatiently and the rain triggered an outburst of leaves and flowers. Even the forest trees are flowering. Some are bearing fruit. The rain has washed all the dust away. All the colors are more vivid. Everything is hopeful. Like our very own little park. It’s suffered a lot of setbacks but slowly we’re getting back on our feet. It’s a long road to where we want to go but we’re on the way. And as the most mundane quotation I can use goes, It’s not what’s waiting on the other side. It’s the climb. I don’t know why I’m quoting her. I don’t even like her. But it’s Hannah Montana for you today, folks. No great poet. No philosopher. Just some pop singer I hate.
My closest friends will know and remember that I’ve always dreamed of living on the fringes of a forest on top of a hill overlooking the sea. I’m working in a park inside a forest and it overlooks the sea. Funny how life works out. You don’t get it perfect. But dreams come true if you recognize them when you meet them in real life. And aching muscles, chapped hands, and sunburned face there’s no other way of putting it: I love my job.
