Why I ate a hummingbird heart in Honduras

When my father was a boy growing up in Honduras one of his chores was to take his donkey and collect wood from the jungle near his home. He would gather sticks and branches, load them on the donkey, and bring them home to make a fire. He would spend all day in the jungle and lose himself in his imagination. He would chase lizards, get chased by bees. He always had his favorite weapon with him, a slingshot. This came in handy when he was being attacked by trees or when he had to take out the evil spider in the center of it's web. Of all the wildlife in the jungle next to the little village my father grew up in, the birds were the most beautiful. He still talks about the rainbow of bright and bold colors of the many birds. He would follow flocks of birds from tree to tree often wandering so far out and for so long that he would forget where he had left his donkey. And of all the birds he saw in the jungle, the hummingbird was his favorite. The palm-sized flutterer with it's shiny metallic green and yellow feathers. He wasn't only taken by the hummingbird's beauty but by what they represented. It was a belief in his day that eating the heart of a hummingbird would give one courage. That he who pulled the still beating tiny little heart from the chest of the bird and ate it would be strong and able to face anyone or anything. So my father chased and hunted hummingbirds with his slingshot any chance he could get, and yes, eat their tiny little hearts. Hearing these stories would freak me out as a kid. First of all, it seemed like hitting a hummingbird with a stone flung from a handmade slingshot would be difficult and second of all, there's that whole eating a BIRD'S HEART thing! Every now and then growing up with my pops I would bring up the hummingbirds and he would laugh. He never saw what he did as a big deal and he certainly never bragged about it. He would just say it's what the kids in his village were doing. That he enjoyed the whole days chase that would hopefully end in him gaining some extra courage points. When I was older, I would tell the hummingbird tales at parties. One time I had a few friends over for some beers and I asked my dad to tell us about the time he ate a hummingbird's heart. He said, "The time? There were many times." My friends cracked up. My dad just sat there smiling.

Fast forward a whole bunch of years later to July of this year. I was making plans to perform on a ship again and saw that Honduras was a port stop in the itinerary. I was so excited, I had only been to Honduras once before when I was nine years old. The port is actually Roatan an island next to the mainland but it was good enough for me. I told my family about the port and everyone was happy that I'd get to spend some time there. My sister, a big fan of the hummingbird stories, asked if I was planning on eating a hummingbird's heart. I hadn't considered this and was kind of overwhelmed by the idea. But the idea stuck. I kept thinking about it. I took a look at my calendar and saw that my 31st birthday would fall on Roatan day. There was only one thing I could do on my freaking birthday in freaking Honduras, right? I told my cast onboard the ship about my idea and they all thought it was crazy, because it is. My buddy and cast-mate Rob, said he'd eat a heart with me. It was on. It was time to find a hummingbird heart in Honduras. Two weeks before my birthday we were in a cab headed to a popular Roatan beach when Rob asked the cab driver if he knew where we could find some hummingbird hearts. The cab driver said he could definitely find some for us. This news got us excited. Two weeks later we were back in Roatan, it was my birthday, and I knew I needed a slingshot. As soon as I stepped off the ship I found an old lady selling HANDMADE SLINGSHOTS! This was too coincidental for my friends and cast-mates, Cody and Matt who were with me. Cody bought the slingshot for me as a birthday gift but also as a way of letting me know that he now believed in my journey. We couldn't find the same driver which was a bummer. We hopped into a random cab and were headed for an area called Half-Moon Bay.  In the back seat of the cab Matt said to me, "If you find a hummingbird and kill it with that slingshot I will believe in God." I never found a hummingbird that day. I was disappointed but the day was awesome anyway and it was just nice spending time in my father's country on my birthday. In the cab ride back to the ship I asked the driver if he's ever heard of people eating hummingbird hearts. He said that he knew that to be a thing people did back in the day. That people believed eating a hummingbird heart would make you strong. Then I kind of jokingly asked him if he knew where to get a hummingbird. He said that all he needed was to make a phone call and I would have my hummingbird. My spirits were lifted. I told him we'd be back in two weeks and that i'd like for him to get two live hummingbirds for me. He laughed and agreed and said he also knew where to get cocaine.

Two weeks later we were back in Roatan. My plans to rush off the ship early were crushed by having to attend a mandatory boat drill that was scheduled to be 75 minutes in length. While waiting for the stupid drill to begin a waiter walked by and said that the drill had been cancelled. Nobody believed him. I spent eight months on a ship last year and never was a boat drill cancelled. But as luck would have it, the drill was indeed cancelled! We all met off the ship 20 minutes later and we were headed to the bustling (and hustling) cab area. Cabbies screaming everywhere, people shoving laminated pictures of exotic beaches in your face, young dirty men letting you know that anything you need (drugs) they've got. I'm taller than most of the people in Honduras and I stood on my tip-toes to get an ever clearer view of the crowded street to scan for our driver. Found him! He recognized us and came over shouting, "Hey! Where do you want to go? You want to go zip-lining?" I was a little taken aback. I thought he was going to come over shouting, "Hey! I've got your hummingbirds!" So I sheepishly said to him in a shaky whisper, "What about the- did you get a chance to- you know, hummingbirds?" He laughed at me and said, "Oh you are the one who wanted those? (more laughing) Ok, man. I'll make a call." Both Rob and Robyn laughed at how I had nervously and shyly approached him about the birds. They are used to being around a confident Chris not a Chris who nervously whispers. He came back minutes later and said he had a guy working on it and he was ready to take us any place we wanted to go. There were five of us so we took two cabs. Rob, Robyn, and myself rode with James while Matt and Cody rode with another driver. We were headed for a plantation on the east side of the island. While driving to the plantation James our driver got a call. He said it was his guy and he has already caught one bird. Rob excitedly slapped me on the shoulder. It was on. A little while later another call. His guy had caught two more and he's asking if he should kill them. I said no, I wanted the birds alive, if I couldn't catch them myself I at least wanted to have a part in killing them. The plan was that James was going to drop us off at our destination then he would pick up the birds and bring them back to us. Problem was when we got to our destination it wasn't our destination. He had taken us to the wrong place. So we headed for the correct place that was going to take us another 30 minutes or so. James got a call from his guy. He was waiting. James made the decision to take us straight to the guy. We pulled off of a main road onto a dirt road and drove for a few minutes. Soon we approached an area full of trees, passed a small wooden shack, and stopped in front of a large rope that was blocking the entrance to a forrest area. A big black man came walking towards the car with a smile and 1.5 liter Pepsi bottle. He shoved his head into James' window and handed James the bottle at which point James handed me the bottle. There they were. Three beautiful little hummingbirds. They were fluttering around and it grossed me out. I could feel their wings through the bottle and all three were staring directly at me. James asked the big man for his pocket knife and turned to us and laughed while saying, "Who is going to be the killer?" I wasn't sure at that moment if I would be able to go through with it or not. We drove off headed for our original destination, the plantation. Both Rob and Robyn who were in the back seat stared at the bottle. I looked at Robyn and she gave me a scared look. I returned a scared look. "Rob, you still wanna do this?", I asked. "Yeah, man.", Rob replied. It was on. I looked down at the three pretty little things and they were looking right back at me. Still. I told James that I was going to need a beer to chase this with. We stopped by a gas station where I picked up two of my dad's favorite Honduran beers, Salva Vida. Rob got a Red Bull and a Coke, both James and Robyn got Cokes as well. I paid. Back in the car headed for the plantation. The more grossed out I got the more I told myself that it was my duty to feel every moment of the grossness. That if I was going to eat the heart of one of these birds I was gong to have to live with being uncomfortable with their staring at me for another 10 minutes. When we pulled up to the plantation Matt and Cody were already there and they told us that the plantation was closed. James was stopped but I told him that I wanted to do this now and I did not want to do it in front of the plantation house where two women were working. James understood and told Cody, Matt, and their driver that we were going to drive down the road a bit to turn around and we would meet them in a minute. We drove and he turned the car around and then he pulled over. My heart was racing, my legs and arms were shaking. Rob was pumped and Robyn was half scared and half grossed out. I handed Robyn my camera and said sternly, "Take pictures." She nodded and grabbed the camera. "Who's going to be the killer? I will be the killer", James said laughing. I said no, I'll kill my bird please. He pulled one of the birds out of the bottle through a slit on the bottle I hadn't noticed. He showed me where to cut and how to open the chest. I grabbed the bird from him then I grabbed the knife. This was a crazy moment. Rob couldn't stop moving and pacing while his eyes were fixed on my hands. Robyn was doing her job as documentarian. The bird was in my left hand, the knife was in my right. I said a quick prayer and began to push the knife's point directly into the bird's chest. Nothing. The knife wasn't going in. I pushed the knife in harder and still nothing. I didn't want to push the knife in with all my might for fear the knife would go through the bird and into my hand. I was stuck. The point was too dull to penetrate. James came to my rescue and grabbed the bird and knife out of my hands. He laid the bird on the hood of the car and then used the knife's blade not point to slice the bird's chest clean open. He held the bird up to me and separated it's chest. I dug in a little and there it was, the tiny heart, the size of half of a pinky fingernail, still pumping and beating. I pulled the heart out, looked at it, and then threw it into my mouth. I swallowed hard. James told me to drink my beer but I held off for two or three beats (pun intended) so that I could really feel the heart in me. Then I grabbed the warming Salva Vida beer and took a giant gulp of it. It. Was. Wild. I had just eaten the still beating heart of a hummingbird. A heart like the many my dad had eaten. It was on. It was Rob's turn. James knew there was no use in letting us slice these birds so he grabbed another bird and did the same procedure and presented the bird's open chest to Rob. Rob plucked the heart out and threw it into his mouth. He took three or four big chews of the heart before forcing it down in a swallow. Rob then let out an animalistic scream, "Ahhhhhhh!" I could see the blood on his tonnage. We had done it. James asked if we wanted to save the third bird for the "tall guy" he was referring to Cody. I said no and that we should set it free. James pulled out the third hummingbird, the lucky hummingbird and let in free into the air. It flapped wildly for a second and flew sideways for a moment and then just like that, it centered itself and floated above us. There it was hovering like nothing had ever happened, like it completely forgot that it had lost two friends, like it didn't remember that it easily could have been dead. James, Rob, Robyn, and myself all stood there silently and watched it fly into the flowery trees. I finished my beer and we hopped back into the cab and met up with Cody and Matt. Everything looked different for a moment. We headed to a beach resort. On the way I kept looking back at Rob and Robyn. We knew that we had just shared a moment that doesn't happen too often. There was a surreal-ness to the drive. I felt close to the grass and trees we were passing. I though about my dad and how much I loved him. I knew that he would think what I had just done was silly. But I also knew that he would know I did it for him. I did it because I want to be as much like my father as I possibly can. I got to hang out with my dad when he was a kid and we chased hummingbirds and we gained courage.

Enjoy some of the pics from the day. I left out the more graphic ones.

The pretty hummingbirds in the Pepsi bottle.

James going in for the first bird.

James showing me where to cut.

Swallowing.

Rob chewing like a mad man.

The scream.

This is were we ended up. We spent the rest of the day swimming.

Matt, Robyn, Rob, and Cody