Wild at Heart

After the split that rocked the world, supermodel Gisele Bündchen is super-ready for what comes next-and she's got some big ideas for what that will be

- By Michelle Ruiz. Photography by Lachlan Bailey

IF GISELE BÜNDCHEN IS A WITCH, SHE'S A GOOD WITCH.

The supermodel is conjuring her mystical, much-TikTokkedabout powers at 7:30 on a recent Friday morning in her “bedroom”—a minimalist casita in the shadow of her towering main house, perched high among the dense palm treetops of Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula—where she is cupping a wounded bird.

Bündchen has just discovered the unmoving robin nestled on a white couch on her terrace, a serendipitous landing place with a panoramic vista of the beach below. Looking bereft, she scoops the bird up with the ease of a Disney princess, taking care with its mangled claw.

“Are you okay?” Bündchen coos to the bird, her throaty voice softening to a whisper. She is stroking its tiny head with an elegant unpolished index finger—performing “a little Reiki,” as she says, referring to the holistic practice of transferring healing energy through touch. She does the same to her kids, Benjamin Rein, 13, and Vivian Lake, 10, all the time.

“He has a little poo-poo,” Bündchen notes in her distinctive accent. The robin has soiled one of Bündchen’s pristine cushions, but she is unbothered, consumed by its fate. (She later spot-cleans the bird’s poo-poo herself.) She calls her home’s caretaker, Victor, hoping he’ll rush it to a local animal sanctuary, and drips water into its beak from an incense holder turned makeshift bird feeder. “I’m afraid that he’s going to die if he stays like this,” she says.