On Thursday the 22nd of October 98 I went over to my friends Martha & Tony Gilkes' spectacular home for cocktails. It had been a heavy day signing prints for the passengers of Monarch of the Seas in my downtown gallery Island Arts but the opportunity to see old friends and lounge around in the glamorous splendor of the Gilkes abode was worth the dark ride over some of Antigua's less fortunate roads.
Many of you will have read Martha's accounts of her
"miracle birds" on the
Caribbean Hurricane Page soon after the storm. Well here are some
photos of the little feathered superstars. On Sep. 19th, as hurricane
George's was approaching Antigua, Martha had been emptying her love
bird aviary of 8 adult birds when she heard "cheeps" coming from a
nest box. Inside she found a newly feathered baby. She removed it to
the safety of a small cage with its mother, but after 24 hours the
mother still hadn't fed the baby. In a bit of a panic she called my
wife Gloria (known locally as the parrot lady) who wasn't too
surprised since mother birds often abandon babies if the nest is
disturbed.
So it was that, just before the hurricane started pounding on Martha's home, she begin the process of hand feeding. "At least it was a distraction during the onslaught of the frightening storm" Martha comments, making light of the rather daunting task of handling a tiny chick and trying not to choke it with a syringe full of feeding formula. Gloria raises a lot of birds and is often hand raising chicks but Martha is a relative newcommer to this delicate operation...... and she couldn't exactly drive through a hurricane to drop the baby off! Well Martha rose to the occasion like a trooper and the little "cheeper" weathered the storm and gained strength over the following days.
48
hours after Georges had mangled Martha's garden and rearranged her
terrace a little, she was surveying the damage when she noticed more
"cheeps" coming from the now BATTERED aviaryŠ there were 2 more TINY
babies, very newly hatched, (NO FEATHERS EVEN), who had gone through
the hurricane with NO MAMA AND NO FOOD! Martha immediately dashed for
her syringe and started hand feeding again. Since they were so tiny
she called Gloria for encouragement but we had to advise her NOT to
be too upset if they didn't survive! Martha braced herself for the
worst, but endeavored to achieve the best..... and all three came
through the ordeal beautifully. Now, 4 weeks later HUGO, LUIS AND
GEORGES are thriving with new colors and hues coming out daily in
their tiny feathers.
I think the little critters helped sustain Martha through the trauma of clearing up the mess Georges had made of her beautiful home which overlooks Half Moon Bay. They are TRULY MARTHAS MIRACLE BIRDS and show that LIFE GOES ON IN SPITE of the horror of the storms aftermath! In the same vein, as I sat on Martha's terrace studying these photos and looking around at my opulent surroundings, it was difficult to see any signs that Georges had visited Martha and Tony at all. For most of us, (there are a few unfortunate exceptions) these storms bring us a lot of anxiety, a few weeks of back breaking work and then....... its life as usual.
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