Juvenal Urbino climbs a ladder to catch the parrot and falls to his death

Juvenal Urbino climbs a ladder to catch the parrot and falls to his death in the muddy patio of his home, shortly before he is due to attend a funeral. The death follows a small, familiar exchange between the doctor and his pet, but its consequences are irreversible: Fermina Daza reaches him in time to hear his final declaration of love, and the long shared life between them ends in a moment of recognition and farewell.

The afternoon before the funeral

Earlier that afternoon, Juvenal had been reading in his room while Fermina was occupied with putting the bedroom back in order after the firemen had left it in disarray. A little before four, she sent for his usual glass of lemonade with chipped ice and reminded him that he should dress for the funeral. He had two books beside him, but one remained unopened; absorbed in the other, he read slowly, pausing for lemonade or a piece of ice. He wore socks and a shirt without its starched collar, and his green-striped suspenders hung loose from his waist. The prospect of changing irritated him.

When he stopped reading, Juvenal set the books together and rocked in a wicker chair. His attention wandered to the banana plants in the wet patio, the stripped mango tree, and the flying ants that appeared after the rain. For a time, the parrot seemed to have slipped from his thoughts altogether. The scene gives the accident its domestic scale: the fatal action does not begin as a considered risk or an urgent undertaking, but as a brief interruption in an afternoon organized around reading, rest, and the approaching funeral.

The parrot and the climb

The bird suddenly spoke from the lowest branch of the mango tree, identifying itself as a royal parrot. Juvenal answered by calling it a scoundrel, and the parrot returned the insult in his own voice. Their exchange makes clear that the doctor recognizes the bird and engages with it as a familiar companion. He keeps talking as he puts on his boots and pulls his suspenders over his arms, taking care not to frighten it.

Juvenal then makes his way across the muddy patio, testing the ground with his walking stick so he will not trip on the terrace steps. The parrot does not take its customary place on the silver handle when he offers the stick. Instead, it moves to a higher branch, near the ladder that had already been leaning against the tree before the firemen came. Juvenal judges that he can reach it by climbing only two rungs. The bird moves farther along the branch as he approaches; when he sings to distract it, the parrot repeats the words without the music. The attempt to coax it closer thus becomes a climb in pursuit of an increasingly elusive target.

Misjudging the branch’s height, Juvenal climbs beyond the two rungs he first expected to need. Holding the ladder with both hands, he goes up to the third and then the fourth rung before reaching with one hand toward the parrot. Digna Pardo, the elderly servant, arrives to remind him that he will be late for the funeral. She sees only the back of a man on the ladder and recognizes him by the green stripes on his suspenders. Her alarm makes explicit what the ordinary, almost playful pursuit has concealed: the doctor is in a precarious position, and the ladder can give way.

The fall and the last farewell

Juvenal catches the parrot around the neck, but releases it almost at once as the ladder slips beneath him. He dies at seven minutes after four on Pentecost Sunday. The timing sharpens the reversal: the bird is momentarily within his grasp, yet catching it does not bring him safely down. Nor does he have time for Communion, repentance, or a goodbye before the fall. A small domestic objective ends instead in an unprepared death.

Fermina is in the kitchen tasting the soup for supper when she hears Digna’s cry and the commotion spreading from the servants to the neighborhood. She drops the tasting spoon and runs toward the patio, though age makes the effort difficult. The narrative follows her from routine in one part of the house to the discovery of her husband in the mud. Juvenal remains conscious for a final minute. Through the uproar he recognizes Fermina, and with his last breath tells her, “Only God knows how much I loved you.” The sentence is both a final disclosure and a farewell: at the instant his life ends, the marriage that has shaped their shared life is placed at the center of his final awareness.

Significance of the death

The episode is built around the collision of the ordinary and the irreversible. A reminder to dress, a glass of lemonade, familiar teasing with a pet, and a servant’s practical warning are all part of a household afternoon; together they lead to a death that cannot be postponed or repaired. The interrupted funeral preparations also make time unusually concrete: Juvenal dies before he can change clothes or leave for the ceremony, at an exact minute on Pentecost Sunday.

The parrot links the fall to the intimate life of the household rather than to Juvenal’s public standing. Elsewhere he is known as a physician and civic figure; here, his last sustained action is to pursue an animal he has loved and to speak with it in a private, habitual manner. Yet the episode does not reduce his death to irony. Fermina’s arrival and his final words turn the abrupt accident into a last encounter between husband and wife. The parrot, the ladder, and the unfinished departure frame a scene in which tenderness and loss arrive together, without giving either the power to undo what has happened.