A Tucan against One

In the morning after breakfast in the lodge dinning room, Chick Evens and his wife, Delilah, moved out to the open air patio, where there were three hammocks, they were deep inside the Amazon, one hundred and twenty five miles from, Iquitos, Peru, it was the month of March, of 2001, their first anniversary.
He had slept well, was looking fresh and wholesome, for his past middle age appearance. He picked up a magazine as he slipped over and into the loose and dangling hammock, constantly looking about for Big Beak, the Tucan mischievous bird. Although it had a colorful beak, and was a large and beautiful looking bird, it was a pest at best, a provoking menace at worse, that had attacked Mr. Evens two days in a row, but was the lodge’s mascot, an icon of sorts.
He was, the Tucan, simply an attention seeker among the people of the lodge, and Evans did not allocate any of his time, nor wish to accommodate the bird with any of his time, thus, avoiding giving any attention at all to the bird, whom he called the Beast-bird, or the Bird-beast, and this annoyed the Tucan.
This was his third day at the lodge, and he’d be leaving tomorrow, and he was hoping to lay back and enjoy the rest of the morning, when Big Beak arrived, another nickname, Evans bestowed upon the bird, shaking his feathers in the sunlit heated morning, under the shadow of his hammock.
The Tucan then started making noises under the hammock, if they had anything in common, it wasn’t this, it annoyed Evens; although the one thing they did have in common was the sun, the fresh air, but not the sight of each other.
“Here he goes again, with them confounded weird noises,” said Chick to his wife.
The Tucan moved down towards the end of the hammock, and with its long stretched out, hard boned beak, he grabbed a hold of Chick’s toe, it was hanging over he hammock, and he wouldn’t let go, until Chick took a swat at him, missed him with his round folded up magazine by no more than an inch, which only enticed the bird-beast to play more games to get more attention.
Several faces looked at Evens, about thirty-feet away, folks playing checkers, reading books, and having loose conversations, they gave him a ‘shame on you,’ look.
“Shoo,” yelped Evens, but the bird insisted on staying.
The feathers on the bird’s throat, stood out now, it was war, or at least a battle to be.
The Tucan came around towards Evens’ hand he let it loose, dangle over the hammock, and when the bird came to bite it, he grabbed his beak, and shook the bird, and let him go, and the folks now had turned to look at the American that was beating up on the poor helpless Tucan, but Evens paid them little to no attention, his thoughts were on the bird.
The bird was now madder than a hornet, and attacked Mr. Evens, trying to reach him, and Mr. Evens gave the bird a good swat, and that stopped his onward thrust, and Evens took that as a victory. But the onlookers were starting to get restless.
For several minutes the bird circled under the hammock, devising his plan of attack or retreat.

“Have you and the bird got over your squabbling yet?” asked Delilah.
“Very funny,” responded her husband, “too bad he doesn’t go over there to visit you.”
Evens was now talking to the bird, as if it was a deaf, child, “Read my lips,” he said, “go away, leave me alone.”
“You simply should not pay the bird any attention, and it will go away, be nice to the bird and off she’ll fly to visit someone else.” said Delilah.
“I’m tired being nice to this bird-beast, I don’t want to be nice, I want it dead or gone out of my life.”
“Don’t talk like that, if people hear you they’ll kick us out of here,” said Delilah, adding “she’s not going to eat you up.”
“I’ve tried hard to be its friend, I’ve come to the conclusion, no American can make a Peruvian Tucan happy, no matter what.”
“No,” said Delilah, “you got to be more patient like us Peruvians.”

Written 2-13-2009. Dedicated to Rosa.