Vucub Caquix

Vucub Caquix is a giant macaw swollen with self-regard. The wooden people had just been destroyed and the true sun had not yet risen; in that half-light he perched in a nance tree and declared himself the sun, the light, and the moon. His teeth were set with blue-green jewels, the rims of his eyes shone like silver metal, and his perch blazed - though the Popol Vuh notes dryly that his radiance reached no farther than the branch he sat on. His wife was Chimalmat; his sons Zipacna, who boasted of building mountains, and Cabracan, who boasted of shaking them down, were as arrogant as their father.

Heart of Sky would not suffer a false sun. Hunahpu and Xbalanque ambushed the bird as he fed and put a blowgun dart through his jaw. Falling, he tore off Hunahpu's arm and hung it over his hearth. The twins then recruited an ancient couple - Great White Peccary and Great White Coati - to pose as traveling healers, themselves trailing along as grandchildren. The bad teeth must all come out, the old ones told the aching bird. One by one the jeweled teeth were pulled and replaced with kernels of white maize, and the metal was peeled from around his eyes. Stripped of his splendor, Seven Macaw died, and Hunahpu's arm was fitted back in place. The twins later destroyed both sons by separate stratagems; the Four Hundred Boys whom Zipacna had killed rose into the sky as the Pleiades.

The tale is far older than the surviving manuscript. Stela 25 at Izapa (c. 300 BCE-50 CE) shows a one-armed figure facing a great bird atop a tree, widely read as this very scene, and scholars such as Dennis Tedlock identify Seven Macaw with the Big Dipper, whose seasonal plunge toward the horizon matches his fall.