Tuim criado no dedo (Conto), de Rubem Braga

TUIM RAISED ON THE FINGER (CHRONICLE), BY RUBEM BRAGA The João-de-barro is a silly animal that no one catches, although it likes to be close to us, but from inside that João-de-barro's house came a kind of crying, a little crying going tuim, tuim, tuim... The house was on a high branch, but a boy climbed up close, then with a bamboo stick he managed to remove the house without breaking it and came down until the other boy got it. Inside, in that little room that is well hidden after the entrance hallway so the wind doesn't bother it, there were three chicks, not João-de-barro, but tuim. You know it, don't you? Of all these little parakeets that exist in Brazil, the tuim is probably the smallest. It has a round beak and a short tail and is all green, but the male has some blue feathers for decoration. Three chicks, one uglier than the other, still without feathers, all three crying. The boy took them home, invented some food for them, one died, the other died, and there was only one. Usually, a pair of tuim are raised at home, especially to enjoy their courtship. But that male tuim was raised alone and, as they say in the countryside, raised on the finger. He spent the day free, flying around the farmhouse, eating little imbaúba seeds. If a visitor came, there would be this demonstration: the boy would go to the porch and shout to the trees: tuim, tuim, tuim! Sometimes it would take a while, so the visitor would think the boy was playing a game, and suddenly the bird would appear and come right to land on the boy's finger. But the father said: "Boy, you are creating too much love for this animal. I want to warn you: tuim is used to living in groups. This little animal gets used to it, every afternoon it comes looking for its cage to sleep, but the day a group of tuim passes by the farm, goodbye. Either you catch the tuim or it will leave with the others, even if it is caught and hears the group passing by, there is a risk that it will die of sadness". And the boy lived with his ear to the air, afraid of hearing a group of tuim. It was in the morning, he was singing worms to fish when he saw the group arriving, there was no mistake: it was tuim, tuim, tuim... They all came down right there on mango trees, castor oil plants and in a bamboo grove, divided into parts. And yours? It had already disappeared, it was in the middle of them, soon after they all disappeared to a rice field, the boy shouted with his little finger outstretched for the tuim to come back, but it never came. He only stopped crying when his father arrived on horseback, heard what had happened and said: "Come here". And he said: "You are a man, sir, I was warned of what was going to happen, so don't cry anymore". The boy stopped crying because his father had comforted him, but how his heart ached! Suddenly, he looked at the tuim on the porch! There was such joy in the house that it was beautiful, even the father confessed that he had also been very unhappy with the tuim's disappearance. There was almost a family council when the vacation was over: should I leave the tuim, should I take the tuim to São Paulo? They returned to the city with the tuim, the boy feeding it every time on the trip. The father warned him: "He can't be left loose in the city, he is a country animal and he gets lost, you have been warned". That filled the boy's heart with fear. He would close the windows to release the tuim inside the house, he would walk around with it on his finger, it would fly around the living room, his mother and sister did not approve, the tuim would make a mess inside the house. Releasing a little one in the yard shouldn't be dangerous, as long as it stayed close by. If it wanted to fly away, all he had to do was call it, and it would come back, but one time it didn't come back. From house to house, the boy went asking about the tuim: "What is a tuim?" ignorant people would ask. "Tuim?" How annoying! He would ask permission to look in the yard of each house, he missed his lunch break and went to school, he went to another street, another. He had an idea, he went to "Mr." Perrota's store: "Do you have a cage for sale?" They said they did. "Did you sell any cages today?" They had sold one to a house nearby. He went there, crying, and said to the owner of the house: "If they didn't catch my tuim, then why did you buy a cage today?" The man ended up confessing that a little green parakeet had appeared, with a short tail. He didn't know it was called a tuim. He offered to buy it, his son had liked it so much, he would be disappointed when he came back from school and couldn't find the little animal anymore. "No sir, the tuim is mine, I raised it." He went back home with the tuim on his finger. He grabbed a pair of scissors: it was sad, it was cruel, but it was necessary. He cut off the wings, so the little animal could roam free in the yard and would never run away again. Then he went inside the house to do something he needed to do, and when...