A third explanation, and one I tend to prefer, is that the self-destruction is a conscious decision taken when the birds are no longer capable of mating.
For all we know, this phenomenon may have some biblical connotation that mere humans are unable to fathom. After all, the scriptures abound with birds of all kinds. Moses warns the people not to make “the likeness of any winged fowl that flieth in the air,” and in his strictures against adultery the author of Proverbs talks about a bird “that hasteth towards the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his wife.”
The Great Mountain, as its name crudely suggests, is the highest peak on the island. Its northeastern slope, on the windward side, has been fenced off and declared a national park. On Sundays tourists come to picnic and gawp at the green gourds and the white and purple orchids. The leeward side is very steep, and inaccessible because of the dense vegetation and the piles of boulders. Only the heroically inclined climb to the summit from this side. I’m one of them, though I have never actually reached the top. I stop halfway, because that is where the birds give their early-morning display.
Perhaps it’s time to go and see the birds again; it must have been six months since I was there.
On that occasion I left home at about three in the afternoon after the usual set-to with the dogs. I was going to be away all night, so they had to be fed. But it wasn’t their usual feeding time; all four left their food untouched and stared accusingly at me as if I had betrayed them. I hoped that as soon as I had gone they would pounce on the liver, their favourite dish, because if they didn’t the ants would make short work of it and the dogs would go hungry until the following morning. In fact, the animals started playing up the moment I put my shoes on. The few times a year that I wear shoes to go into town they start yelping in chorus because they know I’ll be gone for several hours.
But finally I was ready to leave. On the seat next to me was my old briefcase, stuffed with: a woollen blanket (it can be freezing at night up there among the stars), a half-bottle of whisky (also to keep out the cold — but not a full one, as I did not want to be drunk when I saw the birds, and because I needed to keep a cool head for coming down the next morning — real climbers know that the descent of a mountain is often more dangerous than the ascent), a torch (only to be used in emergencies), a few sandwiches (if I didn’t eat them I could always crumble them up for the birds), a thermos filled with ice-cold pineapple juice (for the thirst and the after-thirst), a reserve packet of cigarettes (just imagine dying for a smoke in the wilderness in the middle of the night!) and a tube of red ointment (the label claimed that it had a soothing effect, promoted the healing of cuts, grazes and other injuries to the skin and was also nongreasy, a nonirritant and soluble in water). When I worked in town I used the briefcase for papers and books, but I had converted it into a rucksack with the help of two old belts, because when you climb mountains you need not only both legs free, but also both hands.
It took only twenty minutes to drive to the Great Mountain. I turned off the asphalt road onto a sandy track, which after a few hundred yards became bumpy and gradually narrowed until it finally ceased to exist. I parked the car, hiding it as well as I could among some tall bushes. On this island unattended cars are often stripped bare; everything that can be removed, unscrewed or ripped off is taken. I didn’t lock the doors, because there are also some high-minded thieves around who are only after money. They rummage through your car and if they don’t find any cash, they just go away. But if all the doors are locked, they feel obliged to break one open.
I strapped the rucksack to my shoulders and set out in good spirits for the foot of the mountain. Outside it was even hotter than it had been in the car; there was scarcely a breath of wind. The sun was halfway across the western sky, at the point where its heat is even more blistering than when it is at its zenith around noon. The terrain was not easy to negotiate: everywhere there were deeply gouged dry river beds dotted with prickly pears and low thorny bushes. I also had to pick my way between the stumps of hundreds of saplings that had been illegally felled for use as fence posts. Everywhere I heard the rustle of lizards; at each step I took, tiny brown creatures darted away. The larger specimens were a dirty blue colour with white patches. I saw no rabbits, although they are plentiful on this mountainside. However, I did find some shallow burrows, skillfully camouflaged and usually containing a litter of three blind young. Nor did I see any deer, although occasional sightings are reported by keen amateur naturalists.
The ground now began to rise steeply and became more wooded: indju and wabi trees that can be found everywhere on the island; paintwood trees with their fantastically fluted trunks; the shorter gourd trees with violet flowers on both branches and trunk, their graceful boughs swaying this way and that suggest a beautiful long-haired woman walking in the wind; and here and there a solid and graceful candle tree with its shiny evergreen leaves. And of course cactuses everywhere, with their vicious spines.
It was a slow and arduous climb. The mountainside was very steep and I had to be careful not to slip. Had I fallen, I could have broken an arm, a leg or even my neck — but at the very least I would have been pierced all over by scores of cactus spines, which break off agonisingly in your flesh. I had already acquired several grazes on my arms and legs, but they were not serious. In the very steep stretches I grabbed a sturdy bush or branch and hauled myself upwards. There were boulders everywhere, but they did not help much. They all looked grey, but when I grabbed hold of one of them, its surface turned out to be so rough that it tore open the skin of my hand, whereas another rock that looked just the same turned out to be so slippery that I could not get a grip on it.
Halfway to my destination I noticed that the vegetation had changed yet again. The prickly pears and columnar cactuses gradually thinned out, and I saw more and more globular cactuses, which soon started to dominate the landscape. There were a few splendid specimens: ribbed spheres adorned with neat ranks of spines and surmounted by a white-haired phallus with pale red flowers. But most of them just looked like some prickly animal that had rolled into a ball. I also saw trees whose names I did not know, some of them swarming with yellow parasites, as well as huge trees that were leaning over at an angle of forty-five degrees but still had not fallen. In an enormous columnar cactus, also leaning precariously between heaven and earth, I saw the nest of a warawara, in the inaccessible site these birds of prey always choose. I reached my destination at about six.
I was exhausted from the climb and needed some time to catch my breath. I drank some pineapple juice and lit a cigarette. In this spot giant hands — perhaps belonging to the same supernatural beings who built the pyramids of Egypt — have scooped out a huge triangle from the mountainside, forming a kind of terrace covered with low undergrowth but as level as a football pitch, with the cliff face as a backdrop. At the top of the cliff some large boulders protruded over the edge. I just hoped they were not planning to roll down on this of all nights. At the front of the terrace was my observation post: a hexagonal pillar of rock without the slightest irregularity that rose from the greenery below like a white bastion. At the top the pillar is hollowed out, creating a giant bathtub, whose rough walls look like the crenellated ramparts of a fortress. A natural stone bridge links the top of the column with the terrace. It had been from behind the fantastically shaped battlements of this fort that I had already observed the birds a couple of times without being seen by them.