B20 Returns to the Cage for a While

Omar Enrique Berdugo Cabeza arrived at Fundación Loros that afternoon the way he always does: eyes already scanning everything before he'd even begun his feeding rounds. That's how he saw it. The pionus B20 — a blue-headed parrot, one of those skittish ones that never let you near them — was sitting motionless on a branch of matarratón, feathers puffed and ruffled, with a stillness that wasn't his. Omar moved closer. The bird didn't fly away. That said everything. He caught him with a towel, brought him inside, and found the evidence of what had happened: on the right wing, the marks of a predator that had tried to seize him and failed; on the left, two flight feathers missing entirely. With wings like that, B20 couldn't hold himself in the air for more than a couple of meters. Omar weighed him — 378 grams — documented the injuries with photos and videos, and returned him to a cage stocked with fresh fruit, water, and branches. Then he notified the director Alejandro and his colleague Carlos to make sure everything was properly logged. B20 had already known freedom. He will know it again when the feathers grow back and the wings are truly his once more. For now, the cage is shelter — not a sentence.