Mark Drolette: Relationships can be (with) strange birds

By Mark Drolette

I moved to Costa Rica in April. Save for kitchen cabinets, my new house near San Ramón was empty. With a ten-minute walk to the bus stop followed by a twenty-minute ride into town (I haven’t a car), I was soon overwhelmed trying to put a home together from scratch. Not having Internet service or a phone magnified my sense of isolation.

Cleary, making friends would help. Unfortunately, I am not naturally outgoing. I call this being “introverted.” Others call it being “stuck up.” I prefer the former. But whatever the label, this dratted innate trait was not going to make it any easier for me to adjust here. It wasn’t long before I was craving intellectual stimulation, acceptance, laughter, warmth and gossiping mercilessly about those unfortunate enough not to be present. (I never claimed I was well.)

Enter the winged one…

Shortly after my arrival, I noticed a bird of some sort had built a nest atop one of the five support columns that frame my home’s terrace. Well, I thought, who doesn’t love nature?

What wasn’t so loveable, however, were the enormous poops with which said bird was gracing my terrace with regularity (and, boy, talk about regularity!). Nonetheless, I tried to go with the (considerable) flow and thus I dutifully, and frequently, scrubbed away.

Meanwhile, I continued working on setting up my household. I’d bought mattresses and appliances the first week, blinds the third. I’d also acquired a pair o’ chairs; that was it for the big stuff. The rest of the time was spent schlepping smaller (but often heavy) items home from town. It was all damn tiring. What was becoming depressingly apparent, too, as I transacted in San Ramón nearly every day, was that my Spanish was atrocious, even more dreadful than I’d previously deemed it. It was proving a formidable roadblock, this lack of linguistic lucidity, and I saw my longstanding, and sincere, desire to assimilate into Tico culture -- a tall order to begin with because of my natural introversion -- fading fast.

Exhausted, head abuzz, I came home after one particularly frustrating day in town only to find the terrace (that I’d just cleaned that morning) replete yet again with huge messy splats of purple gucky stuff (that’s a technical term). That did it. Piqued, I took a broom and knocked the nest from its perch. Horrors! Three eggs had been inside. Now not only was I lonely, friendless and possessed of wretched Spanish, I was a killer, too. (And we all know how bird murderers fare in prison. Shudder.)

The bird, however, was undaunted. Promptly, it began putting up a second nest. Promptly, I knocked it off. (Three avian abortions on my conscience were enough.)

It was around this time I began being awakened every morning by odd thuds on my bedroom sliding door that adjoins the terrace. Yep, ‘twas the bird, pounding its beak repeatedly into the glass, doing this every half hour or so until I’d stumble out of bed and open the blinds. As if that weren’t strange enough (and it was), the possessed one would then throughout the day alight periodically on the railing outside my study window -- and stare at me.

It was all pretty weird, all right. Weirder still, the bird began constructing yet another nest. I broomed it, too, but, clearly, a new approach was needed. Aha! What if I put a big rock up there to block access? A foolproof idea, this. The obstacle was placed.

A fourth nest was built -- atop the rock. I’d been vanquished.

Now, as silly as this may sound, that goofy critter, after I waved the white flag upon realizing it was determined to raise a family in that spot no matter what, soon became a surrogate “friend” that I looked forward to seeing during the day, providing welcome moments that, in a still-strange land, began to lighten my load (even despite its still doing likewise, frequently, on my terrace).

Which brings us to this article’s “aww” moment: Two thriving birdlets just today flew from nest IV.

Of course, as heartwarming as all this is, it was still no substitute for human companionship. I still needed friends of the non-feathered variety or I wasn’t going to make it here, simple as that. Well, in the interim, I’d caught a break: My editor back in Sacramento asked me to interview Costa Ricans for an article, which I realized meant I would have to actually go forth and talk with some. (I’m quick that way.) I’d now be forced to use my hideous Spanish regardless how scary it seemed. (Though it’d seem even scarier, no doubt, to my victims, er, interviewees.)

Obviously, there was only one thing to do: I would flee the country. No, seriously, what really happened was that I just sucked it up and started interviewing people. (I can be faux macho when I have to.) The time for resistance was over.

And, hey, what’s this? Just as I’d gained benefits from no longer battling the bird, so I garnered immediate rewards once I swallowed my fear-based discomfort and started interviewing people. I got some great quotes, to be sure, but best of all, I am now making friends of the human kind. And not just friends, but Tico friends.

Um, could you excuse me now, please? It’s time to go clean the terrace.

Comments

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