CHILEANVENTURES – Lucio, el pajaro del milagro – When hope defeats death
Few days ago we went downtown to visit Cerro Santa Lucia. Charles Darwin visited this “little hillock of rock” that rises nearly 70 meters above Santiago’s noisy streets and described the view from there as “certainly most striking”. @jlufer wrote few weeks ago a post with some very nice pictures of the Cerro like the following one.
As it’s often the case, we knew where we were heading, but we didn’t know what we would have encountered. In fact, we arrived in three of us (me, @cryptowife and @rainbowarriors) and we are now in four: Lucio joined us!
Everything started with the wind. As the day was very windy, a nest felt off a tree. Two baby birds suddenly hit the floor, one on the concrete, the other on the ground. A Chilean guy passing by stopped and protect them from the dogs (did I mention that Chile is full of stray dogs?) whose mouths were already watering.
This scene caught our attention. Observing the two little birds their destiny seemed doomed. The one that felt on the concrete probably broke his neck and was clearly agonizing. The other seemed ok, but as @cryptowife toke it in her hand we discovered how severely injured it was. Its chest seemed to have a big hole and it was full of little seeds all around. We later discovered on the internet that what got broken was that bag where birds collect food before digest them, i.e. THE CROP (image credit).
I didn’t take the picture of the injury, but even if I had I wouldn’t post it here without a warning for explicit content. Imagine yourself with an open chest: that’s how the bird looked like.
Everyone thought that the poor bird could no longer live. The injury seemed like a hole too big for such a little body; no chance for healing. Everyone agreed that we should let Nature take its c(o)urse.
Everyone but @cryptowife. She said: "Ok, I'll bring it home and I'll heal it". What may have looked like a childish, stubborn stand, felt like not the same to me. In fact, I knew she took three years classes in a veterinary university and during her whole life she took care of a whole bunch of pets. So I offered my hat to keep it warm and safe as we brought it with us during the climb to the top of the Cerro and then back home on the bus.
As we arrived home, we set up the surgery room. First, the tools. We found a curved needle and some cotton yarn; boiled some water to sterilize them; @rainbowarriors provided some natural disinfectant she has been given in Australia.
Then, the operation. @cryptowife needed someone who could grab the bird while she was sewing its crop. I was the only one who could do it, everyone else could barely look at the injury for a few seconds before feeling sick. I never took part of an operation but I have a kind of “I can do pretty much everything” mindset - I didn't know I would have almost fainted meanwhile.
We pray God to inspire our actions, to take care of the surgery and to save (t)his little creature.
The operation was very difficult: we didn’t have anesthesia, the needle was too big for its thin skin, and the risk of irremediably damaging its throat was high. @cryptowife started sewing: one, two, three…eventually the injury needed five stitches. Could the bird’s hearth survive the pain without anesthesia? We didn't’know. Could its body recover and avoid infections without using antibiotic? We didn’t know.
What we do know now is that it could. I know that the operation may sounds grim or cruel, but it was the only possibility for the bird to survive. If we left it on the ground a stray dog would have eaten it. If we didn’t sew its injury he could have never eat again and eventually would have die for starvation. We may haven't got the experience to perform the surgery but we felt like God could have helped us.
And the Lord helped us and the bird. Here’s is how healthy and hungry it was the day after the operation (for the joy of one of @cryptowife young cousin).
I learned an important lesson that day. Even when everybody else is telling you that there is no possibility of hope, even when everybody else is looking at you as a child who is not accepting the reality as it is, if you feel like you can do it, if you feel there is even a slight chance, if you feel that everything is possible with the help of God – then do it against all odd. It’s been three day now that Lucio is living with us (that’s how we called the bird – as we found it in Cerro Santa Lucia and because it sounds like lucho in Spanish, i.e. I fight) and there are times when I close my eyes and I see it eating seeds from my hands with great joy and feel so happy that we did what we did.
In la feria in Santiago we found a little cage to carry it with us today on the bus to Valparaiso.
This is how its chest look today, 60 hours after the surgery: no infection, but some rose cotton yarn that will remind us a day when a little miracle occurred.
