Alexandra Clemente Perez

Crested Oropendola

The San Francisco Zoo has an enclosure for animals and birds from South America—a place we are not close to by any metric. It’s a 20-foot-tall warehouse built in a demure classical style, complete with fake Grecianesque columns. It doesn’t look particularly “South American.” It looks very “San Franciscan.”

Once my friends and I cross its double doors, the temperature and humidity increase by double digits. The animals and I are all compatriots here—Latines in a foreign, cold land—a land I have been in for almost half of my life at this point. But here, I am looser. I take off my jacket, and I feel my hair getting frizzy. My shoulders relax. I move more fluidly as I marvel at this familiar fauna. This is my natural habitat.

Parrots and other colorful birds fly among the translocated, foreign trees. There are snakes in fish tanks, coiled up in carefully placed woodwork. There are those colorful, tiny, poisonous frogs you see in screensavers and documentaries; cute but deadly. A sloth balances itself in the crook of a branch for a nap, achieving enviable equanimity. 

Up on the branches are two black birds with beautiful contrasting features. Bright yellow tail feathers, large yellow beaks, and beady little blue eyes. I recognize the species immediately. I’ve seen them before, flying around my hometown of Caracas, Venezuela. I’ve seen them looking for companions in my parents’ backyard. In their ritualistic mating dance, the bird bows its head, fans its wings and tail, and makes a high-pitched cry peppered by sharp clicking sounds. After seeing them in such an intimate display, I feel I can claim a strong connection with them. 

A friend asks me, “What’s this bird called?” when I claim kingship with this animal. I pause. I search my brain. The cogs in my head turn and turn. I open all my internal filing cabinets and use reverse image search on any available neuron. I stare into infinity with my beady eyes while my insides run in circles.

My search comes up empty. I can’t find it, the name of species. “I don’t know”, I sigh out, tilting my head slightly, looking into their eyes. Defeated. 

The sign tells me it’s a Crested Oropendola. That name doesn’t resonate with me; that’s not the name I’m not remembering. I know it’s called something else. I called it something else. There are so many places and things around me that I used to call something else. Things I used to call names I am actively forgetting. Things I used to call names I no longer remember.

I come back to the bird. I search for its name outside of my brain: in its blue eyes and black/yellow feathers. Its twitchy head. Its peppered cry. But I get nothing.

“¿Cómo no sabes quiénes somos?” the Crested Oropendolas seem to say in concert, clapping at me with their long, yellow beaks. They don’t want to, and don’t need to, speak in English here.

“Compatriota perdón, no me recuerdo de su nombre, perdón. No me lo recuerdo. Qué pena.” I think to myself in our shared mother tongue.

I feel ashamed, like I’ve forgotten the name of an old friend who I have run into on the street. Sure, these particular specimens are complete strangers to me. Yet, I feel like we have so much in common. I feel in them the homesickness I’ve shared with other fleeting compatriots. Compatriots are those who tap my shoulder and give me a knowing look when they hear my Spanish-peppered cries. Compatriots are those who I welcome with a smile when they start a sentence saying “yo soy de…”. That one person who stopped the Christmas party to ask who had brought the pan de jamón.

My compatriots and I can’t deny our origins when it’s this warm. Our tongues, our names, and our skin give us away. Like these colorful birds, snakes, and frogs, you know by looking at us we were translocated here. My fauna compatriots and I are more at home in this enclosure’s heat and humidity than in the cold and fog outside. People outside these walls know us by a more Anglo-Saxon friendly version of our names and of ourselves. Here, we don’t have to explain who we are. My compatriots and I can’t deny ourselves. Our tongues, our names, our skin, give us away. Like these colorful birds, you know by looking at us we were translocated here. Here, we shouldn’t have to explain who we are. I should know the Venezuelan name of this bird instinctively. It is disrespectful that I don’t. 

Outside these walls, we must be known by a more Anglo-Saxon-friendly version of our names and of ourselves. The Crested oropendola couldn’t survive on the cold, foggy Pacific coast. But I do. I have to. I do it by taking what this bird and I have in common and building an enclosure around it. Only contained can these things be kept alive. How can my warmth and rolling r-s survive in this foreign climate? This conservation technique begs the question: how alive can something be if it can only live in captivity? What maintenance cost do I have to bear to keep my internal South American exhibit running? If I can’t afford that cost, how long until that structure is abandoned and the things inside it die from translocation diseases like frostbite?

If I’ve lost the name of this bird, what else is gone? I wonder how much of myself I’ve lost living outside my natural habitat. In Caracas, I don’t have to worry about the weather. My hair gets frizzy, and while it is annoying, it is familiar. People know me by a name I rarely hear anymore. People know a Crested Oropendola as a Conoto. 

“Pero ya yo no vivo ahí” I mumble audibly to myself and my compatriots.

I leave the enclosure behind. I have to catch up with my Anglo-Saxon friends walking ahead of me. The translocated birds, sloths, snakes, and frogs will keep living in their contained yet natural environment. I put on my jacket as I exited the building and entered the unnatural environment that I call home. I close the door to the enclosure. 

“I don’t live there anymore.” I have to keep reminding myself.