Number 2 and His Twelve Companions

For years, macaw number 2 carried a verdict that seemed impossible to appeal: he was too tame to live in the wild. He had grown up so close to humans, so accustomed to their presence, that many doubted he could ever find his place among the trees. But animals, sometimes, take it upon themselves to prove us wrong. On March 21st, Alejandro Rigatuso found him in the sector of the Ara aviaries, near Cerro El Peligro, and what he saw left no room for doubt: number 2 was flying fully integrated into a flock of about twelve macaws, as if it had always been that way. They have been free for months now. He is no longer the tame macaw of the aviaries — he is one among twelve, part of a flock that moves and makes decisions together. Sometimes tameness is not a sentence, but simply a starting point.