Memories of a day in a Miranda Tourist Fishing Lodge

Ken Schneider / TN page

It is a comfortable chair. I sit watching the river flow Carrying tons of debris and plants and trees to some far away place in the sea. Three feet from me there is a young woodstork. He plays with a fishing rod. The hook is slightly stuck to the inside of his beek.Ten feet toward the riverbank a white egret stands alone likewise watching the Miranda River flow on its final leg to the Paraguay River. The birds both in the stork family are parentless.
They are orphans. They have been raised and are cared for by the Lodge recently open in order to cater to fishermen from the whole of Brazil.

Neither bird fish anymore. They prefer to hang around fishermen who now and then feel sorry for them and toss them something out of humane charity. They have learnt that they can get fish for free. The egret tried but gave up in the end. The woodstork does not even try, he lives out from something like a welfare system. I think of him as if he had been retired due to invalidity  forced by some kind of handicap.

On his left foot there is a big, huge lump. The first time I saw him I thought that river snail was parasitizing on him. People have tried to rid the bird from the lump. Someone, I was told, had slashed the lump open and extracted a sticky, glooey liquid. To no avail. Workers at the Lodge said that the bird when it was very, very young jumped off his improvised perch on the roof as many times as it felt like during the night. That was  how, he got the lumpy snail that seems to be an inflammation of some nerve.

It is a sad bird. It doses off at 11 p.m. and wakes up to effortfuly walk along the riverbank. He has never really ever flown or apparently cared to. It is in river explorations like this that he get himself into trouble, like when he swallowed the fishbait that was in the hook and got the hook stuck in his beek. The sight of a big white, black-headed, long-legged bird hooked to a fishhook scared the São Paulo-born, wife of a fisherman called Victoria Campesi.

“My God, the bird swallowed the hook. What do I do, moço?”

“Sei lá”, only God knows” answered the husband tilting his head sideways meaning that he  had no idea of what to do to unhook a bird from fishing hooks.

“Como on, do something Honey, you are a fishman”, Victoria implored with her Paulista, nearly wailing, humanistic accent.

Calling names and swearing vehemently the husband explained that rescuing and separating birds and baits was not part of a fishman’s training. An unknown man sitting nearby entered the conversation soothed the woman’s fear saying that such things do happen.

“I once saw a cat with that same kind of problem”, contributed the man.

“The hook was stuck somewhere in the cat’s mouse” he said as he explained that somewhere in the Amazon there lived a man that had a cat that enjoyed stealing food.

“And what did you do, did you unhook the cat?”, Victoria wanted to know.

“Me? Nothing”

“The man told me that no fisherman wanted to involved with the cat that meowed and showed teeth desperately”.

“So it died?”, Victoria insisted.

“No the man ran to his wife for help. She unhooked the poor animal”.        

Miraculously while the visitors exchanged information the American woodstork himself rid of the hook. 

Living with a little bit dignity but artistically leaning on somebody else’s effort. Eight black river cormorants seemed to have settled down for good across from the hotel. They fly beautifully  and land in the water with a poise and in a dignified mastery. But they don’t want to fish anymore. They have discovered, it seems, that they can get food without having to dive and swim underwater for fish. What they do now is to wait for the tourists’ loving kindness. As I nurtured these thoughts a well-to-do fishing tourist from the state of Espirito Santo, threw a river sardine in the water. The sardine was dead probably was in the bait can, and as it splashed against the water it sank as strait as possible as commanded by the Law of Gravity. The cormorant nearby dove head first and swam proficiently after the lifeless stiff fish. It surfaced ten feet downriver. The cormorant kind of stand out of the water with fish held crossway in his beek and in seconds it disappears down the bird’s throat and long neck.