Valentino

It was February fourteenth and the nesting season when they decided to clean the palm trees. Two baby doves fell with the branches, one already dead, one still living. Valentino survived though naked and blind, to be taken home and fed  every twenty minutes of the day. Strength was needed to open his beak and a syringe to squirt in milk and mashed meat doves not understanding that mouths need to be opened before bellies can be filled. And Valentino thrived spiky rudimentary feathers appearing as he grew and grew.

 Thinking of his adolescence we were concerned about the wild cats who patrolled the gardens, so we took him to the Parque Tropical where baby eagles are reared. There, we explained the predicament to Juan who seemed to have heard such stories many times and was clearly uninterested in a certainly dying dove. And then at the sound of voices Valentino stood up in his box, looking round with his still blind eyes his huge belly now on show.

  “Oooo gordo!!” said Juan.

  “Si, come mucho,” I said.

  “Oooo come mucho,” said Juan to his colleagues now gathering round. Juan picked him up and right on cue Valentino poohed.

  “Oooo,” they all said lost in admiration. I fed him then and he collapsed in exhaustion as usual which made them all laugh! And so it was that they took the precocious newbie to grow up among the eagles and parrots in the Baby Station.

 It was February fourteen one year later. Two doves appeared in the baby palm in our garden and stayed for a week. We liked to think it was Valentino coming back to introduce his partner!

 It was February fourteen one year later when two doves again appeared in the baby palm in our garden.

 It was February fourteen one year later…….

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