Home On The Deranged

I was on a press trip in Mexico, and my host Emilio and I were outside San Luis Potosi in the northern Mexican desert when we spied the dusty bazaar of animal sellers. Makeshift lean-tos of cardboard and tin lined the side of the road. Women and children squatted beneath their shade, grasping the straps of leather and cloth that bound birds and small mammals. As we slowed the women ran to us, waving the birds around their heads like gauchos whirling a bola. They were golden eagles, majestic birds evolved for the most efficient flight. Even bound and disoriented and flapping wildly, their beauty and strength was striking.

Strapped to logs behind the lean-tos were hundreds of other animals: red-tailed hawks, ospreys, buteos, peregrine falcons, owls, and doves, rabbits, prairie dog type guys and coatimundi, tied by the legs. They all beat futilely against their ties, creating small storms of fine dust.

Before our truck rolled to a stop a woman with a stout young eagle was hanging on our window. She was dragging a little burro who had cut-off ears and fear in its eyes.

"Aguilas!" she shouted. "Solamente 50,000 pesos!"

She lifted the eagle on chapped, scarred hands to the window of the truck to exhibit him. He was a handsome one. Not quite mature, but strong and fit. He eyed us piercingly and extended his wings gracefully. The burro shrank back from the flapping wings.

"Why do you sell these birds and animals here?" Emilio asked the woman.

"We trap them in the mountains, from the nests," she responded. "We have young ones too." She pointed to the cardboard box in the hands of her daughter standing next to her, and the girl immediately tilted it to show us. Four eaglets, still downy, nestled in the clutch in the corner of the box. Though scared, they had the same fearless, direct gaze as the bigger one. She grabbed the burro's rope, jerking him towards us.

"We have many who are young and healthy, too."

"But, senora, these animals are rare," I told her. "There's not many of them left in the world. Why do you sell them?"

"For money," she replied earnestly.

I thought a minute. "But the other vendors on the roadside just a few miles back sell nuts and fruit. Why don't you?"

"We can't grow corn here."

"Why not?"

"Because we have no water."

"This village?"

"Yes. Charco Grande has no well. We would like to. It's hard to sell the birds."

"Who buys them?" I asked.

"The people in the cars," she said.

"Many?"

"No, not many."

I looked at the young eagle in her hands. The vast sierras in the distance framed him.

"If I buy that eagle, and the burro, will you turn them loose?"

"Of course," she nodded immediately. "They would be yours then."

"No, not ours," Emilio said beneath his breath. I pulled a 50,000 peso note out of my pocket and handed it to her.

She tore at the ties with her teeth, letting the eagle dangle from her hands. Upside down, he held his neck up and stared at us. His eyes showed alarm, but he didn't fight the woman. She pulled a knife from out of her clothing and sliced through the ties, then held the eagle against the sky. Abruptly, she tossed him above our heads. Then she cut the little burro loose.

Immediately, the eagle transformed. The bound animal he'd been moments before exploded into a reaching, climbing creature of strength and beauty. His wings extended and flexed in a burst of power and he propelled himself through the air towards the mountains. Each exuberant beat conveyed his sense of completeness and release into flight. Freedom! It reeled like a dust-devil across the desert and encompassed me, linking his spirit with mine. The donkey galloped under him. Their abandoned rush lifted me. With steady, surging strokes the eagle shot across the chaparral towards the mountains. The burro and he became specks....Even the woman and daughter stood silent until they were only two specks of pepper against the lavender-lit foothills.

The woman began to rub her hands together with a dry, scraping sound. "Another American stopped and did the same," she said distractedly. Then she looked up eagerly at us.

"I'll sell you two more for 80,000 -- "

"I can't," I told her.

"If we had a well, they would stay free," she murmured.