Hummingbird Island
An adventure with jaguars and coconuts
A secret paradise
On Hummingbird Island, the only wind is created by the beating of tiny wings. The air is filled with the curious clicks hummingbirds sing as they change paths. Many red things grow on the island.
Most of the hummingbirds we know have to eat all day to keep their tiny bodies going. But on Hummingbird Island, there are so many red flowers so close together that the birds can be much more efficient about feeding. So they have time to read and reflect. Some of them have even smoke the occasional pipe.
One sharp little fellow, having read most of the books, decides that maybe there is more to life than just this island, with its hummingbirds and placid jaguars. The jaguars only eat coconuts, because there aren’t any small mammals to eat.
There are little animals on the island, marmosets. But their diet includes a particular red berry that gives their flesh a taste that jaguars don’t like. So the jaguars stick with the coconuts.
Sometimes the jaguars let marmosets ride on their backs. Sometimes the marmosets hitch a ride and the jaguars can’t do anything about it because the marmosets hold on tight with their tiny marmoset hands. The jaguars buck and twist, but the little monkeys are persistent. The jaguars aren’t quite bright enough to figure out that they could scratch their backs on a coconut palm and knock the pests off that way.
Coconut teeth
The young hummer knows he can’t get far on his own. He tries and nearly doesn’t make it back to the island before his wings give out. Then he notices how strong the jaguars are. They can crack coconuts with their teeth. Maybe, he thinks, they can swim. He raises this issue with one of them, named Fergus. (The hummingbird has no name, because hummingbirds are smart enough to remember who’s who without them. But we’ll call this little guy Hummer.)
“What’s ‘swim’?” Fergus replies.
There’s a stumper. Problem is, jaguars don’t read. Hummer knows about swimming because he’s read about it in the Encyclopedia Hummingbirdiana.
Eventually he figures out a way to explain what swimming is, and he leads the jaguar to the beach.
“But it’s wet!” Fergus exclaims when he reaches the water.
“Just give it a try,” the hummingbird says patiently. And he needs patience, because it takes a long time to entice Fergus into the water. Finally, though, the jaguar gets wet all over. He flounders a bit, then figures out how to swim. It seems to come naturally, which is a good things because jaguars aren’t too bright.
He likes it so much, he introduces the other jaguars to the idea. Now it’s his turn to be persuasive. But pretty soon, the jaguars are all paddling about in the cove. And, dim as they are, they figure out that diving under water is one way to get the pesky marmosets off their backs.
A nest of red flannel
The hummingbird builds a little nest between Fergus’ ears. He lines it with a bit of red flannel, figuring it might be cold out to sea. He stashes a few vials of honey.
“What are you doing up there, anyway?” Fergus asks.
“I’m getting ready for our journey.”
“What’s ‘journey’?”
So Hummer patiently explains. “And we’ll go on this adventure and you’ll swim, and I can fly up and check which way to go.”
“Um, I don’t know about this,” says Fergus. “Sounds like a lot of work” And he said this because jaguars are a bit lazy. They like nothing more than stretching out in the sun for a long, delicious nap after a refreshing swim.
“Oh, come on, Fergus,” said the hummingbird, who was getting a bit frustrated with all the explaining. “You’ll like it. It will be an adventure. We never have adventures here. All we do is eat and sleep and read—well, I read and you nap—and there has to be more than that! I know there is!”
And indeed he did. The world described in the Encyclopedia Hummingbirdiana was a fascinating place with red trumpet flowers such as Hummer knew did not grow on Hummingbird Island. There were things called orchids and bougainvillea. There was an orchid called vanilla that he was eager to taste, even though the flower was white.
Buoyed by coconuts
Not much was white on Hummingbird Island other than the insides of coconuts.
Thinking of coconuts made Hummer think to tie a couple of them onto Fergus’s back.
Once Fergus got used to the idea, he quite liked it. The coconuts made a pleasant rattle when he walked, very appealing to the girl jaguars, and as an extra added benefit, they buoyed him in the water. Hummer was delighted at that. It meant Fergus could go farther without getting too tired.
Finally they were ready to set out. They were seen off at the beach by a crowd of jaguars and marmosets and a cloud of hummingbirds. The birds all thought Hummer was nuts, but each of them, in his secret heart, hoped Hummer found something out there. Because a hummer with a quick brain can get tired of just eating nectar and reading the encyclopedia.
Amid the waves
Fergus swam bravely out of the cove and into the open ocean. The waves were bigger out here, but he paddled stoutly through them, aided by the coconuts. Hummer wrapped himself in the red flannel, keeping the vials of honey secure from the tossing of the surf. Every half hour or so, he’d launch into the air, scanning the horizon.
For three days, he saw nothing. Fergus swam doggedly on, pausing only once a day to crack open a coconut, drink the liquid and eat the flesh. By the time he was cracking the fourth coconut, he was beginning to feel a bit tired.
“See anything yet?” he panted as Hummer once again landed in his nest.
“Actually, yes,’ said the bird. “I think I see land. You need to bear just a bit to the right.”
Energized by the thought of a warm sandy beach and the prospect of a long, delicious nap in the sand under a coconut palm, Fergus swam with renewed strength and purpose.
Giraffes and parrots
And soon, they had reached a beach. Fergus settled in for a nap while Hummer flew over the land to see what he could find. His tiny hummingbird heart was beating faster than ever with excitement.
He soon discovered that it was another island, not much bigger than Hummingbird Island, which was just the right size, in Hummer’s opinion. There were no hummingbirds or jaguars that he could see. Not even marmosets. It appeared that what lived here were parrots and giraffes.
Hummer tried to talk to the parrots, but they were gruff and unfriendly, and they spoke another language entirely, with a lot of clicks and caws. They didn’t seem too interested in learning hummer language.
Giraffes, as everyone knows, do not talk at all.
The only other animals on the island, as far as Hummer could see, were strange upright creatures, with hair only on the head. They wore flannel worked into shapes such as Hummer had never dreamed of, in all sorts of colors. Hummer flew up to one who was wearing red, hoping to start a conversation, but the creature reached out and tried to grab him. Hummer scooted out of the way just in time.
Then he noticed that these creatures could grab all sorts of things—stones and sticks and fruit. The marmosets back home had hand-like claws that could turn fruit over and over, but these strange new creatures did much more than that with their forepaws. They used them to build shelters.
Throwing stones
Hummer was just wondering whether the jaguars could be taught to arrange palm fronds and grass in the same way when he realized that some of the shorter two-legged creatures were throwing stones at Fergus. And at him! Not that they were likely to hit him; hummers can maneuver quickly. But some of the stones hit poor Fergus, who woke up and roared.
And his roaring, which never had any effect on Hummingbird Island, because everyone there knew that’s just what jaguars did, made the two-legged creatures run away.
Hummer settled back into his nest. “Fergus,” he said. “Maybe we’d better gather some coconuts.”
“Can’t it wait? I just woke up.” Fergus sounded sulky.
“Did the stone hurt you?”
“Oh, no. But I was having such a delicious dream! I was floating in a quiet cove, and hummingbirds were bringing me coconuts and cracking them on the rocks, and all I had to do was eat them. It was marvelous . . . say, what were those creatures?”
“I don’t know. There’s nothing like them in the encyclopedia. But I do know I don’t like stones thrown at me. So let’s get some coconuts and get out of here.”
Back at sea
Soon they were back in the ocean, coconuts floating all about them. Hummer was a bit worried about his own stock of nectar, but that was easily replenished on the next island they visited. Fortunately for Fergus, it was only a short swim from Stone-tosser Island.
The new island had pigs and parakeets. Bushes and trees were laden with flowers of all colors. Hummer tasted many of them, but he liked the red ones best.
There were two-legged creatures on this island, too, but Hummer and Fergus stayed out of sight. The creatures were fun to watch from a distance, though. They all wore flamboyant flannel and were always doing things with their hands, like tossing balls and digging in the dirt and picking up coconuts.
And they played with fire! Hummer had never seen anything like that. For him, fire was something that sometimes scorched palm trees during a lightning storm.
But these two-legs, as Hummer thought of them, seemed able to make fire anytime they wished. He couldn’t see the use of it himself. The fires the two-legs made were hot, but the air was warm enough without them.
At night, the two-legs sat around big fires on the beach with the strange wolflike creatures that followed them around all day. They put fish and roots in the fire for reasons Hummer couldn’t fathom. Maybe they liked the light, he thought. But why? Day was day and night was night.
Staying dry
The two-legs had made something else that intrigued Hummer. They used trees and vines to make structures that floated on the water. When the two-legs sat in the structures and pushed the water with pieces of wood, they could move on the water without even getting wet.
Hummer tried to ask the parakeets about the structures, but the birds didn’t know what he was talking about. They were wrapped up in themselves. When they weren’t eating seeds and fruit, they preened and fluffed their feathers.
The pigs weren’t much use, either. They muttered gruffly in a language Hummer didn’t understand before waddling off to roll in the mud and chase the parakeets. They didn’t even seem to care that once in a while the two-legs would kill one of them. Pieces of pig were something else the two-legs put in their fires.
Fergus and Hummer swam on to visit many islands. They saw many new kinds of flowers and many of the creatures Hummer knew from his reading. They found vanilla orchids and trees with cinnamon bark.
But none of the birds were hummingbirds, and none of the creatures were jaguars.
And none of the flowers were as wonderful a red as on those on Hummingbird Island.
Back home
Then, one day, after a long, long swim, they came upon an island that smelled familiar. Fergus swam around the island until he came to a cove that looked familiar. They were home!
And everything was just as it had been. The hummingbirds sipped nectar and read books. The jaguars cracked coconuts and took naps in the sand. The marmosets dug for roots and danced in the moonlight.
But Hummer found he couldn’t just go back to his old life. He had seen too many things. Reading about them in a book was one thing, but actually seeing, and smelling and tasting and touching them was so much richer.
He tried to explain these things to the other hummingbirds, but no one really understood.
They didn’t understand about the two-legs, either. Hummer knew he would never be able to explain them. He would never have believed them if he hadn’t seen them for himself. The things he had seen them do seemed so fantastical!
And they had the structures, the ones that let them move on the water without getting wet. That was like Fergus and his coconuts. He wondered if the structures could move the two-legs to other islands.
He wondered if the two-legs could come to Hummingbird Island.
That would be a bad thing, he decided. They might push the hummingbirds away and throw rocks at the jaguars. They might kill and eat the marmosets.
What to do?
The other hummingbirds wouldn’t listen to his concerns, or couldn’t understand, but Fergus did.
“We’ve got to do something,” Hummer told him. “When the two-legs come, I don’t want them to make a fire on our beach.”
“We jaguars could roar at them,” Fergus said. “They don’t like that.”
“I know. But they might use sticks to kill you. Like they did with the pigs.”
“I remember that. It was horrible.” Fergus sighed. “If only the island were invisible.”
“Now there’s a thought.”
“No, really. How could the island not be seen?”
“There’s this thing I read about in the encyclopedia. It’s called a mirage.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s where you are traveling in the desert, and—”
“What’s desert?”
“Oh, sorry. Anyway, it’s where you think you see something but it really isn’t there.”
“But, Hummer, that’s not what we want. We want something that really is here to not be seen.”
“Oh, right. I’ll have to think about that.”
So Hummer went off to think and Fergus went back to sleep. And in the end, it was Fergus who dreamed up an answer.
“We’ll weave a net,” he told Hummer.
Once they had a plan, it wasn’t difficult to interest the other creatures after all. The hummers were tired of reading, and the jaguars had gotten all the sleep they needed. Even the marmosets got into the act, bringing stout vines that the hummingbirds wove together with strong spiderwebs, as strong as steel. The jaguars, Fergus and his brothers Frank, Fred, Felix, Fibboty and Flir, and his sisters Faith, Felicity, Freida, Fredda and Fern, swam around the island, attaching the net to the rocks.
Everyone worked hard to pull the net up over the rocks, over the trees, into the air at the top of the island, where they attached the net to a star. And inside the net, the island was invisible.
And it is invisible to this day.
Legacy
Every generation of hummingbirds is taught how to weave the vines and spiderweb, to fix places where storms and lightning fires have damaged the net.
Every generation of jaguars is taught to care for the net’s moorings, helping the hummingbirds to patch the places where the surf has worn it away. For everyone knows that water is the strongest element, stronger than wind or even fire.
And every generation of marmosets is taught to watch the horizon, scanning for the floating structures the two-legs of legend might push toward the island with pieces of wood. Just in case the island really isn’t invisible.
And every generation does its duty as a ritual, nothing more. Because everyone knows the two-legs are a legend. No such thing could be possible in the real world of Hummingbird Island.
Hummer and Fergus are remembered as legends, too, legendary explorers who traveled beyond the island—or maybe they just had vivid dreams. Dreams of things that were outside of everyday knowledge.
Extraordinary dreams.
—30—