Out of Captivity : Surviving 1,967 Days in the Colombian Jungle

Broken Bones and Broken Bonds211When she came into our side of the camp, his eyes lit up. He’d runaround grabbing any unused tablas, vines, clothing, or anything hecould get his hands on to seal up the little breaches in the fence wherea chicken could squeeze through. He knew that, regular as clockworkat around noon, this chicken would lay an egg. All he needed was thatone egg and he’d be on his way to becoming a chicken mogul. No matterwhat Marc did to block the hole in the fence, the chicken wouldinvariably find some other place else to escape. Once outside our enclosure,she would lay her egg tantalizingly out of reach. Marc was oftenso busy trying to plug one hole in the fence that he didn’t notice thatthe chicken was gone. We all took great pleasure in seeing him turnaround to discover that his chicken had escaped again. His face wouldgo from expectant to crestfallen in about the time it took for us to gofrom observing to laughing.Marc wasn’t the only one who was taken with animals. A few straycats hung around camp. They weren’t feral cats but domesticated ones,who would run off to wherever they could find food. We fed them a bit;mostly, though, they feasted on the rats and mice that ate our food supplies.Because they performed a valuable service, the FARC let thembe. The Colombians had very different attitudes toward these animalsthan we Americans did. Consuelo was appalled that we would pick upthe cat and set it in our lap to pet it. She would shake her head, put herhand up to block the sight of the cat from her eyes, and say, “Ah, Diosmio.” She would no sooner finish questioning how we could touch afilthy cat when she would pick up a chicken, put it in her lap, and petand kiss it. As Keith would say, “And we’re the dirty Americans.”In spite of the food conflicts with the other prisoners, the monthscontinued to roll by. While we were able to share laughs and storieswith them from time to time, one thing we did not share was our escapeplan. The three of us didn’t talk about it much, but the hole behind thebathroom was ever present in our minds. We were always on the alertfor aircraft activity. We had all put together what we called our “go kits,”