Read Online The Aguero Sisters by Cristina Garcia - Free Book Online Page A

days, people used to gather tree-duck eggs for profit. The nests could be found in clumps of regal bromelias or in the crooks of trees cushioned with thick Spanish moss. Common folk and breeders alike used to raise the
yaguasas
among their own domestic poultry, because they broke up barnyard quarrels and whistled at the approach of strangers.
Tree ducks, I daresay, were an avian blend of bouncer and rural guard
.
    My
yaguasas
grew to be quite elegant, with lovely long necks and the hauteur of fine geese. Of course, they were excellent watch ducks too. In fact, my mother credited them with saving my father’s life during a particularly fractious strike at the cigar factory
.
    Early one morning, two men I did not recognize knocked on our front door. The taller one carried a tree limb studded with nails. The shorter one, unshaven, had pineapple fists. It was apparent they had come to teach my father a lesson for his leading role in the strike
.
    No sooner did Papá come to the door than my ducks raced from the backyard, whistling and squawking and scattering feathers. They attacked the men with the resolve of old hens, viciously pecking and scratching them until the thugs stumbled away in a daze. No one ever came to disturb our peace again
.
    Sadly, the once abundant
yaguasas
have disappeared along with the island’s lowland forests. With luck, one might still spot a few in the remotest regions of the Zapata swamp. At night, they fly out to visit the palm groves of cultivated plantations and eat the
palmiches,
the clustered fruit of the royal palms
.
    Neither of my parents had any inclination toward ornithology, so it was all the more remarkable that they encouraged in me a preoccupation so far removed from their own interests. They indulged me with frequent trips into the countryside for my field observations. On one trip near Bailén, I spotted a pair of sandhill cranes, already quite rare when I was a boy. They were digging in the scorched earth of what was probably their former breeding grounds, digging with their bills for roots or beetle larvae in land that had been cleared to plant more sugarcane
.
    On another trip, to the Lomas de los Acostas, I caught my
first sight of a red-tailed hawk. It was known locally as the
gavilán del monte
by the peasants who lived in the huts high on the open savanna hills
. “¡Gavilanes del monte! ¡Gavilanes del monte!”
the women cried from ridge to ridge when they spotted the hawks. Then they turned to warn their own chickens, which scurried, terrified, into their coops
.
    Every spring and fall, I searched the trees for the many migrants that lingered in Cuba en route to and from South America. I collected hundreds of birds over the years, shooting them with my sling and a few well-chosen stones. Mamá complained that our house flew with feathers, but how else could I study my beloved birds? I watched their migrations and imagined flying in their immense flocks, darkening the unreachable parts of the sky. Often, they traveled at night, billions of them, at altitudes too high to be easily observed, taking their cues from the sun and the stars, wind directions, and the magnetic fields of the earth. That, I decided, was how I’d fancy traveling
.
    During the winter of 1914, a record number of American redstarts and black-throated blue warblers sojourned in Cuba. The trees around our house positively shook with their commotion, disturbing my father, who had fallen ill with yellow fever. His temperature soared, he vomited continually and could barely lift his head from the pillow. After several days, jaundice set in. Still the birds continued to bicker and sing
.
    My mother and I took turns reading aloud
The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius,
to which Papá had frequently turned when troubled: “Think of the universal substance, of which thou hast a very small portion; and of universal time, of which a short and indivisible interval has been assigned to