Once upon a time , but really a long time ago , i was 13/14 years old and lived in the countryside , within the Paraná state and, among other things on our small farm , we also did breed turkeys.
I remember quite well how it started, it was a day of wheat harvest . Upset my dad came home a little before lunch time and said that , the harvest machine had past over a turkey nest and smashed the van and its eggs , of which only one remained intact and was in his hands.
Sad but hopeful we place this egg under a broody hen and , a day and a half later a litle creature , who would be part of my life for the next 5 years , was born .
As it was customary, every time, that for some reason there was an orphaned animal , I could keep and foster it as a pet , and that's what happened .
Turkeys, when small, are very fragile , so to prevent it from being exposed to the weather, I put him together with my rabbits , that had been my brother Laurindo´s gift ...
Every time i opened the door of the rabbit warren , he came to meet me screaming Cuió Cuió, for being gangly (young turkeys are gangly) he seemed to be made of springs , and I think that it was sort of unconscious , but when I realized it , i was already calling him Cuió de Mola ( CUIÓ SPRING ) .
With the time Cuió de Mola grew strong and sometimes when I opened the door he was standing on top of one of the rabbits that , lying down seemed not to care about the weight of his friend .
Time passed until one day very early , happy and bouncy Cuió de Mola came to my encounter with a newborn rabbit in its beak, then i realized , that the time had come to take him away from his rabbits friends .
Months had passed and Cuió de Mola was now a handsome teenager turkey that had nothing left of gangly, he ran loose in the backyard and increasingly ventured among the plantations .
In our small farm , among other things, we also planted tobacco and, every day, before the sun dried the dew from the leaves, my father entered the plantation looking for possible caterpillars that could be damaging the plants.
I , who liked the smell of tobacco wet with dew, used to go after my father amid the plantation and Cuió de Mola accompanied me. At the beginning my father complained saying we were breaking the leaves , but then started to feed Cuio with the green fat caterpillars found on the tobacco plants . And so it was , that in a short time my father and Cuio became friends.
Cuió liked to follow me around wherever i went and was always ready to defend me , whenever it would be necessary . All it would take , was for me to scream loud enough : Cuio Cuio he would replied glu-glu-glu and come running with the maximum speed he could reach , making circles around me , scratching the ground with his powerful open wings , while shouting glu-glu-glu-glu (sort of as if saying ... no one will touch you, I am here to defend you) ... most of the time it was a joke.
Time passed and Cuió, now , fully grown , spent part of the day with his own kind eating caterpillars and other insects that they found among the plants . Always returning home before sunset , where they were fed and then , they would sleep in the shed .
However, one day in the late afternoon the turkeys didn´t come back . It began to darken , my heart was pounding fast and i yelled : Cuió, Cuió ... nothing , i called again and , it took a while and the silence was broken by a weak , barely audible glu-glu-glu. I ran across the field toward the neighboring farm , on the direction of the sound of his voice.
Cuió was the first one i spotted , it was him that made it the closest to home ... 60 adult turkeys and they were all fallen on the ground , all of them poisoned, some were already dead.
Our neighbour on the left side had sprayed poison to kill caterpillars of his soybean field , the same caterpillars that the turkeys liked so much to eat.
Each time my father sprayed poison on the plants he did it really early in the morning , or in the late afternoon , to avoid the strong winds , and in this case , in order to avoid poisoning , the turkeys were locked up and , in recent years it was almost not necessary because the turkeys kept our crops free of pests . Who could imagine that our neighbour had sprayed poison at the time we were all inside the house , at lunch time and nobody saw anything.
Sobbing i wiped off the tears that fell and kept me from seeing properly.
When i approached Cuió, he raised his head, unable to issue a single sound . Crying i caught him in my arms and ran , on my way back home , i found my father who had come searching for me , cause he had sensed that something was very wrong.
It seemed like a nightmare , and with flashlights , we searched among the soybean plantation till we found all who were still alive, one by one the survivors were taken and placed in the courtyard in front of the house. Not sure how it was that my brother Laurindo found out , cause he lived on the second small farm after ours , do not know if I went to his place to call him or if he heard my screams, i only remember that he and my sister-in-law were also there at home helping with the turkeys.
My father used a hammer to crush a big amount of ice , in a pan , he mixed it with half a packet of sugar . With spoons we opened the animals beak and force the mixture down their throats ... Cuió de Mola was the first to receive the antidote , he was lying there and each time I came near he made a huge effort trying to raise his head , but was unable. I lost count of how many times i made him swallow sugar and ice ...
When the ice that we had at home was finished , I ran to the neighbour on the right side. Never before I had crossed in the middle of a soybean field , without fear of snakes , that perhaps could be there, however, that night I didn´t think anything , i was terrified . I approached the house from the back , climbed up on one of the trees and then i called the couple who lived there. The dogs started barking and surrounded the tree where I was, it was not long and our neighbour, a man already well advanced in age, came to meet me...
I left there carrying ice , and to ensure quite a lot of sugar.
It was a long night ... Some of the turkeys did not resist and ended up dying before dawn , but the vast majority responded well to treatment , before sunrise Cuió de Mola stood up and walked around me making glu-glu-glu-glu .
We locked them up for two days, with lots of water, lots of spring onions and corn.
And almost everything went back to normal.
My father, after what happened was disappointed and did not want to breed turkeys anymore , he said it would be impossible to avoid them from walking to the neighboring plantations and , therefore, they could again eat poisoned caterpillars .
Some time had passed and , between Sunday lunches , and a few that my father donated to be auctioned off at church and school parties, only a few were left .
Cuió became more homey, a kind of guard together with the dogs, he was always around . One day , I was playing with my nephew Marciano, that at the time was ten months old , and Cuió de Mola, as usual, walking after me on the courtyard making glu-glu-glu-glu
And then it happened ... Cuió de Mola jumped really high trying to reach and peck the baby that was in my arms , i ran very fast , and he ran after me . After that day, every time my nephews were visiting or spending their school holidays with us , jealous , Cuio would attack them.
Rosi, Léia , Marcia and Fabio were already bigger , and they even thought it was funny run to escape from Cuió de Mola , the problem was with Victor and Marciano , cause they were still very small. A few months later Fabiane was born ... and Cuió didn´t give truce.
At first, when the kids were with us, Cuió spent most of the day locked in the shed , but it was cruel and he complained a lot doing glu-glu-glu-glu . So my father had the idea to put him together with the goats and sheeps on their fenced pasture with barbed wire , cause there, in addition to being a big space with lots of trees and a small covered area, the barbed wire was really next to each other, avoiding thus a possible escape , considering that Cuio de Mola was accustumed to enter and exit, the cattle fencing pasture , whenever he wanted .
Cuió loved the holidays with goats and sheep , and early on, he made it clear who was the boss ... Every day I gave him extra food and hugs.
And so the years went by, and between, studying, bike riding, care for animals and , get away with my nieces to bathe , hidden in the river ... I turned 18.
Now Cuio de Mola was already more than an adult and sometimes nasty and pick a fight with people or even with other animals.
The youngest of my brothers, was visiting us and crawled under the shed to collect duck eggs , when he came out, half of his body still under the building ... Cuió attacked with claws and beak . I ran, caught and locked Cuio de Mola in the shed , my brother bled quite a bit and after that the two were never friends again...
1981 was not a good year, in May I would be 19 years old , and in early February, I went to study and live with my aunt in Rio Grande do Sul.
Cuió de Mola did not react very well to my absence, he became quite aggressive and was forced to spend a lot of time with goats in the fenced pasture.
Now he only obeyed my father and among other things , he learned to escape the barbed wire fence and went looking for trouble with the dogs of the elderly couple, our neighbors . When it happened during the day , it wasn't such a problem, because after a while, he would get tired of upsetting the dogs and come home. It was worst when he would escape at dawn , go straight to the neighbour´s farm , waiting for the owner´s Lady , start to milk the cows, and then stand in front of the stall´s door fighting with the dogs and not letting her out ... There was no other way, our neighbour had to come to our place , call my father , who would go with him back to his place , in order to bring Cuió de Mola home. And this would happen about once a week.
I think it was in July, after ten years of dating, my younger brother got engaged, I heard . In October my father fell ill and underwent an emergency surgery , i ran back home , straight to the hospital ...
The first thing my father told me in the hospital , was that my brother , had served Cuió de Mola for the guests at his engagement party. Dad also said that my brother did it without his consent, and that he didn´t eat Cuió . Apparently, no one managed to eat Cuió de Mola, cause of his age, he was too hard .
Sad and angry, i put all my energy in the desire that the engagement would go wrong . I´m not proud of what I did , but I think it worked .
At a Christmas party, in the same year, my brother met a girl , got mad out of passion and abandoned his fiancee ...Then , he went to live with his new love, they moved to Maringa, where my nieces Claudia and Angela were born.
The end .
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