a specter of death in tago

There’s a specter of death in Tago. And everybody believes it’s all because a tagkaro has been tweeting a death knell for almost a month now.Whether tagkaro is crow or raven in English, the fact remains: it’s a messenger of Death.

According to old folks, when a tagkaro makes a sound, someone’s going to die.In DREAMS, my short story published by the Philippine Free Press, I wrote about omens, thus: "And so it was with relief when Anna learned much later that every death in the island village of Kinabutan involved a premonition--- a black butterfly; the scent of candles; the accidental breaking of a plate or a glass; a dog baying in the dead of night; someone dreaming of a wedding, or falling teeth, or riding a boat; amimispis murmuring in the dark corner of the house; even the passing of clouds over a crescent moon."

At a time when you seldom see birds dotting the Tago skyline, it makes you wonder where this tagkaro comes from, why it sounds at dusk, how much is its quota, what is its process of selection.Iyo Acoy and Longlong Bagohin left for Manila after the tagkaro has already claimed at least 15 lives in Tago alone. When 'Yo Coy and Longlong died in Manila, my friends sent me a text message if I had heard the tagkaro sing a requiem in some metallic corner of MOA or a grassy space in Serendra. Perhaps it did, but I must have missed it as I was busy flipping over the price tags amidst the frenzy of a mall-wide, midnight sale.

Somebody had suggested, just to end this scourge, to launch a bird-hunt, a sort of “To Kill A Tagkaro”! But then an old man said that it’s all for our own good to do otherwise.“Don’t even dare shoo the tagkaro away because if you do that, it will multiply. And if it happens and they launch into a symphony, may God have mercy on Tago!”And so what is there to do? Let’s just pray, he said, that soon it will go away on its own.Makes you wonder if the tagkaro is a pet let loose by firms offering funeral services. In which case, it makes you wish for a bird-flu outbreak.

(Note: Photo stolen from the Net)