Hummingbird Salamander(10)
I tried to imagine traveling that far as an adaptation, through so many different kinds of terrain. This was an epic journey—and one only allowed due to incredible specializations. The changes a human being would have to undergo to inhabit such places without equipment. Wouldn’t they change your point of view, too? Wouldn’t you become someone else?
Like many species that have northern-skewed ranges for breeding, S. griffin is a snowbird and migrates closer to the phylogenetic nexus of hummingbirds in South America. S. griffin winters (December–March) in the Andes (where, of course, it is actually summer). Oxygen is limited at these altitudes (> 2,000 meters) as well as during the bird’s migration; nonetheless, S. griffin maintains extraordinary metabolic rates that are enabled by adaptations in the hemoglobin protein that binds oxygen to iron. These changes to the heme group are inducible during their migration and winter in the Andes but are not present during their summers at lower elevations in North America.
But it wasn’t just the journey. The flowers. The nests. All of it, once I had time to really immerse myself. Caught up in a way I hadn’t expected, not just because of the mystery. But the data, after all. Who wouldn’t be moved by the details? Maybe it was just me, or maybe it was the flush of the first real intel.
Status: Unknown. The last documented observation was in the Stein Valley Nlaka’pamux Heritage Park, British Columbia. Ornithological groups are seeking information, photographic sightings, or recorded calls.
Not just rare, then, but presumed extinct. Last seen in 2007. I felt a pang of emotion, as if this was a twist. But a twist that you could have seen coming. And after the pang—it took no time at all—that emotion began to recede from me. Couldn’t hold on to it. Self-inoculation.
That month the southern white rhino and a species of pangolin had gone extinct. Wildfires in five countries meant animals were crawling to the side of roads to beg people speeding by in cars for water. People were poisoning vultures and shooting bats out of the sky, scared of pandemics. To care more meant putting a bullet in your brain. So, like many, I had learned to care less. Silvina called it “the fatal adaptation.”
Alone with my thoughts, this was all unsettling, destabilizing. Excitement, joy, sadness, unease, in the briefest period. Even now, I can’t truly explain the nexus of that, and how it rippled through me.
So I focused on the why.
Why would a person named Silvina leave me this particular taxidermied animal? I saw the route the hummingbird took as evidence. Northwest. Local during part of the year. They might even have flown right through our neighborhood. In the middle of the night—headed somewhere that cared enough to put out sugar water or plant wildflowers.
What sort of person would send this kind of message? Sometimes a founder’s psyche became reflected in their company and, thus, in how they handled security. But this wasn’t about what happened subconsciously. This was a person who couldn’t afford to be direct. Or who didn’t trust me but, for some reason, had to tell me something. Bound by the rules of a game I couldn’t see clear yet.
Usually, a message wasn’t passive. Usually, on some level, a message so dramatic called out for action. But Silvina hadn’t asked for anything. Except, I thought, to follow the clues.
There, in the parking lot, I loved that hummingbird, with a fierce and protective love. But resentment flared up, too. I could neither get rid of nor keep the hummingbird. Silvina had made some essential decision for me and it came with baggage.
The taxidermy Silvina had given me was illegal, contraband. If caught with it, if I read the law right, I could be prosecuted.
I should have destroyed the hummingbird. Could have tried to find a way to save myself. Remained frozen instead.
Not because of the mystery of the word “salamander,” but because of the blank spaces between hummingbird and salamander. The more I stared at the piece of paper, the more those lines of.…. . ate at me. Something watched me from those coordinates, and if something watched me, I was already involved.
Code or symbol, distress signal or warning?
[14]
The week that followed seemed like another country. Perhaps because the country I had lived in didn’t really exist. Or not the way any of us thought it did.
Things like family dinners. The repetitions that spoke to how much we loved routine.
Pork chops and asparagus and small golden potatoes with a crisp skin soaked in butter. I had seconds, and then thirds.
“Long day?” he asked.
“Yes, and I forgot lunch.”
That came as such a surprise, he leaned back in his chair. Even my daughter looked up from her devices.
“Distracted?”
“Yes.”
A bird in my locker at the gym. Tiny lie, growing larger and larger. Tiny Larry, growing larger and larger as he feasted on fallout from our encounter.
“Yeah? Why?” My husband was a bear, but when it came to prying he was more like a burrowing badger. He had his reasons.
The box pulsed and glowed and shook, wanting so much to open and fly away into words.
“She has difficult decisions to make,” my daughter said, saving me.
“What do you mean?” I asked, too sharp.
My daughter shrugged. “You always do.”
Is that how it seemed to her? I laughed then, but now it makes me sad. The look she gave me. Did she know something I didn’t?