Green Garden War

 

Peeking out from among browned needles on the redwood twig in my hand is a new green nub! I check other twigs. More green sprouts. New life. Yes! The redwood I brought as a seedling to Chile from Muir Woods in California thirty years ago is not going to die! It is my forest in our small city backyard. How I love inhaling its evocative pungent scent and watching its feathery branches swishing in the wind.

            When I brought the sapling here in a plastic tube, global warming hadn’t hit Santiago yet. It still rained regularly in fall, winter and spring. I never doubted the sequoia would adjust to this Mediterranean climate. Now, after fourteen years of drought, the trees in our neighborhood are dying and the redwood is close to being more brown than green. I’ve begun slow-watering it and observe with hope the progress of the new green growth.

Then the parrots arrive.

The non-native invasive Argentine parrots have taken over the city’s avian air space and food sources. They prefer building their basket-like, bulky condos in conifers. This year they’ve been sampling the flavors of my redwood and seem to find them tasty. When I realize that the small, top branches are bare, I declare a parrot war. I haul out the hose, adjusting the spigot to achieve a long, narrow stream, and aim the water to the highest branches where several green parrots are dining. Depending on the water pressure, I can almost reach the top. Sometimes I manage to hit them and they fly off in a chorus of squawking. I turn off the water and return to whatever I was doing before the parrot arrival. Yet, soon I hear more squawking and I must rush back to the hose again. Sometimes hubby helps, but we realize that this is an impossible task.

He sends out a plea to the family WhatsApp for a BB gun. A nephew arrives with his “rifle” and demonstrates how to use it. We’ve never had a gun of any sort in our house. I never imagined that we, a bird-watching family with a shelf filled with bird books, would be in favor of shooting the feathered creatures. But it was either the redwood or the parrots.

From an upstairs window, my husband takes aim and –pop! At first nothing happens, but then- squawk, squawk and off they fly, disgruntled with that disruption of their meal. Later, when they return, hubby takes aim. Pop! “Got one!” I look out to the garden and there lies a beautiful green parrot on the ground. It tries to fly, but only makes it short distances. My first reaction is to go to it, pick it up and coddle it. It manages to climb into a thick, tangled mass of ivy on the garden wall. Suddenly, we are faced with a dilemma. Our intention was not to injure a bird, just scare them until they learned their lesson.

            “I don’t want it to suffer.” I’m surprised at the intense sadness I feel.

 “Well, we want to get rid of them, don’t we?” says my husband, but I know he is upset as well.

            We search among the tangled ivy vines unsuccessfully. Is his soft green form languishing amidst the leaves or has he managed to climb to the top of the garden wall and fly off to join his clan? I doubt he’s able to fly again.

 We’ve put ourselves in this moral dilemma: the redwood or the parrots. There are hordes of parrots in every neighborhood. Only a few sequoias. Both introduced species. Will climate change reduce the parrot food supply? Or will my redwood, native to cool coastal California climes, succumb to the blistering summer heat?

So far today, no parrots! Have they learned their lesson? We have. Aim to frighten, not to maim.