The Beginning of Everything

In 2019, Rosángela received a green-and-yellow chick in a cardboard box at her apartment. She had gotten it at the Bazurto market, where someone had simply offered it to her — and she had accepted, unaware that keeping an Amazonian parrot was illegal in Colombia. Her boyfriend, Alejandro Rigatuso, an Argentine citizen who had been living in the city for some time, received it with surprise, the way you receive a gift from someone you love. What followed was pure improvisation: a turquoise gymnastics bar as a cradle, a syringe and a spoon as hand-rearing tools, and the internet as the only available veterinarian. Alejandro read, tried, adjusted. The chick grew slowly, feathers gradually replacing the grey down, its eyes growing more alert with each passing day. Beethoven was the first — though in the records of Fundación Loros he appears as number 15. That paradox says everything about how important things begin: without protocol, without a name, without anyone yet knowing that this moment will matter. An unexpected gift in an apartment in the El Cabrero neighborhood, and the urgent need to return that small green body to where it belonged.