Marabout

Denis claims he's a marabout. That's the name in French West Africa for a shaman/healer/seer. The last time he claimed this, we were driving through a murky November night in Normandie. "You know that I'm a marabout," he said. "The marabout says we're about to see a sanglier (wild boar)." No more than two minutes later, we saw not one, but seven boars--a whole family herd of them trotting along the side of the road and veering off into the woods away from the beam of our headlights.

This last Sunday in Normandie was cold. A dusting of snow lay on the ground, but the day was vividly sunny. I was feeling restless, as it was too chilly to do much work in the garden. In the way of a restless child pestering its parent, I was bugging Denis with aimless conversation while he read his latest art book. "You know," I said,"You're really falling in the French gardening opinion polls lately. You haven't provided me with any exploits to write about! In my last Postcard, I wrote about my cookbook collection, and I was forced to admit that you were unable to enlighten me about a lot of French cooking terms."

He looked up from his book. "Oh la la, je vois que c'est grave." he said, only half joking, and lurching out of his comfortable seat. "Let's go for a drive. You'll see, we'll find something for you to write about."

Now, there was, I admit, nothing out of the ordinary in going for a drive. Sunday drives are one of our major preoccupations in the country. Sometimes, if an intriguing event is listed in the local paper, the Courrier Cauchois, our drives have a destination. But often as not, they're just random ramblings in the finest Sunday drive tradition.

This drive was certainly random. Denis turned down some roads he'd never been down in 15 years in the area. We found a small antique fair in a village where we'd never been, and then we headed for our favorite beach at Varengeville-sur-mer. Faced with vertical white chalk cliffs, the ocean here almost always is infused with exquisite greens and blues. The luminous water and the delicate light have inspired scores of artists, including Braque, who was from this village, and Monet.

Almost immediately after we got down on the beach (the tide was mostly out), Denis spotted a bird. "Look," he told me, "That's not a species you usually see here." I followed his finger and spotted a large black bird with a white chest, perched on a low rock out in the receding water. He looked a bit like a penguin.

We approached, slowing down as we got nearer so as not to startle the bird into flight. We drew closer and closer, and still the bird didn't budge. Just at the moment that Denis observed that we'd better make sure he wasn't mazouté (covered with oil), I spotted a big black smudge across half of his white chest.

We looked at each other in dismay. The bird was at least 15 feet out in the surf. I for one was starting to imagine wading out in the icy water, but wouldn't the bird just swim away?

Denis got right down to the edge of the water, directly in line with the bird. I was standing slightly behind and off to one side. He spread out his arms, kind of like a bird himself. His body seemed arched toward the bird. He talked to it, curving his arms repeatedly toward his chest. "Come," he said to it urgently,"Come on, come to me."

The bird came straight to him, holding his wings out at half mast and hobbling unsteadily through the shallow water. I felt tears prick my eyes. My marabout, my healer, my man strong with the force of his gentleness.

With the bird at our feet, we were forced to consider how best to pick him up. He had a beak nearly three inches long, made to snap up fish. Having answered the marabout's call, he nevertheless flapped in a panicky way when Denis tried to grab him, opening his beak wide.

"Take off your jacket," I told Denis, who was wearing an old knock-about coat with a thick sweater underneath. I took the jacket, approached behind the bird, and swooped the coat around him, hugging him closely but careful to get fold his wings next to his body.



Unfortunately, up to this point I had not had my camera on me. I ran to the car to get it, and took the picture at the head of the article. We transfered the baby to my arms, where he grabbed a bit of the jacket lining in his beak and held on. This seemed to comfort and calm him.

We got into the car, and turned on the heat. The first threat to a bird's life from oil on its feathers is hypothermia. This is because the oil collapses the insulating structure of the plumage. As he warmed up the bird became entirely calm in my arms, just blinking his eyes alertly from time to time.



We, and our bird, were fortunate. We knew of a special center for the succor of wild animals about 40-minute drive away, in the village of Allouville-Bellefosse. We had discovered the center, with its small museum in homage to coastal Normandie's threatened wildlife, on another Sunday drive a couple of years ago.








The French passionately love acronyms, and the acronym of this center is CHENE, which means "oak" in French. Allouville-Bellefosse is famous for the ancient oak in its churchyard (over 1300 years old, one of the oldest trees in France, photo right), and the association for saving animals managed to find a name with an acronym of the same name.

Denis called them from his cell phone to make sure they were open and to alert them of our impending arrival with the bird. Then he stepped on the gas, asking anxiously every few minutes in a doctorly way if our bird was toujours en vie (still in life) and breathing well.







When we arrived at the center our bird was alert and feisty. He popped his head up as if to check out where we were taking him, and took a few jabs with his beak for good measure. Perhaps he understood some of the bird calls in the air, as the center has a pond for the final stage of rehabilitation of water birds, which become crippled if kept on dry land too long.













We were met by a friendly and intense young man who was simultaneously managing the museum, which had lots of visitors on this bright and sunny afternoon, and taking in the latest victims. He took the bird out of my arms, grasping him expertly by letting the bird bite his finger, then grabbing his beak with that hand and the bird's body just between the wings with the other. He held him up for inspection, to evaluate how much of his body was covered in oil. It looked to me like about 50%.








He told us that he was sure today was going to be a busy day for him. He had heard from another center that on a beach some 60 miles away, 70 oil-smeared birds had been gathered that morning. He had already taken in two other birds of the same species as ours that morning, and they were in considerably worse shape than ours. Once he had popped our bird into a box to await treatment, he showed them to us. They were huddling forlornly under a heat lamp.







These birds were guillemots de Troîl, a bird native to the coasts of northern Europe, the United Kingdom, and Iceland. They are rarely seen on shore, usually staying a kilometer or more out to see, where they float on the waves and fish, rarely perching. They are in fact members of the penguin family, so the resemblance we had noticed was no accident.

Denis the doctor asked how they treated the birds. We were told that first, the birds are weighed. Then they receive an injection of a liver-supportive concoction of sorbitol and other compounds, to protect the liver from being damaged by the oil that the bird ingests from its feathers. Kaopectate is administered orally to coat the gastrointestinal tract and help prevent absorption of the oil. Only after several days of supportive treatment, and if the bird's weight is adequate, is the bird cleaned. Washing a bird is extremely traumatic and will kill all but the most robust specimens, so it is not attempted unless the bird is in a very vigorous state.


Just then, our conversation was interrupted by an elderly couple bursting into the center. The gentleman was carrying a cardboard box. "Un petit malheureux," (a little unhappy one), he answered when the young man asked what he had there. We all peered into the box to see another oil-smeared guillemot de Troîl. The manager of the center had been right; it was going to be a busy day for him.

We took a quick tour through the familiar museum, viewing the exhibit showing an oily beach, with dead and dying birds (victims brought to the center that hadn't survived and were taxidermed) with a new perspective. Our beautiful Varengeville hadn't been touched by oil yet, but somewhere far out at sea, a ship had carelessly jettisoned some oil into the water, poisoning our bird and countless others. Yet this was just a small, everyday occurrence, not even what is termed an "oil spill," but just a deliberate jettisoning of fuel or used oil into the ocean. I thought of the long, unfamiliar journey our bird had made through frigid waters, looking for his marabout. Luckily, he found him.

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