Lucky has had two litters.
Her first litter was given away and taken at night when no one was paying attention.
This second litter of seven is housed in a suitcase under the front porch of the guest house. Besides the banging of mango’s falling on the roof, Scott is serenaded by puppies at one in the morning every night. Their four part harmony is mediocre but they are great at crescendos.
Lucky, diligently, stays up all night barking at threats to her brood but sleeps all day on the tiled front porch floor, in the shade.
This morning, Ms. Sue’s girls are coaxing Lucky back to her puppies by laying down a string of dog treats. They lay one down and Lucky walks to sniff it, then gingerly eats it. They lay another bite, just a little further, and Lucky follows them. No smart dog is going to turn down a snack.
Back at her suitcase, she is reunited with her kids, each one named by Ms. Sue’s children.
Their names, as chosen by committee, are Lacy, Lucy, Larry, Lalo, Lily, Lewenski, Lemenski.
No one is sure where the last two names come from but they are on a handwritten note given to Ms. Sue. The note has a big heart drawn on it and all seven names are printed neatly in a little girl’s hand.
How anyone will put the right name with the right puppy is yet another miracle?
Roads, in the Haiti countryside, are mostly dirt,with holes filled with rain water, covered with a sprinkling of rocks.
After a strong rain,these roads, leading deep into the bush, become non- negotiable and new paths have to be made through the underbrush so folks can reach their plywood shacks with tin roofs, homes with sheets for curtains, and plain Jane outhouses.
This steer is stretched to the end of his rope and he drinks from his own muddy bowl in the road’s middle, guarding it like a dog guards his bone.
Placing distance between us, as I gingerly walk past, I look at distant mountains and hear goats tied to fences, complaining continually about their nooses in the pastoral setting.
This bovine is intimidating.
I don’t see him taking off with a stranger without a brawl.
It would take a special kind of thief to take the end of this rope and lead this guy home.
Gecko’s are ubiquitous, strutting on television commercials, hiking up walls, screens, lounging on tree branches around my Haiti home.
This gecko doesn’t stay long enough for introductions and moves away quickly as I approach. In a shutter click he is off the screen and down into the underbrush,his green body lost in thick vines. His best feature is his unrelenting hunger for mosquito’s.
Mosquito’s are a Haiti problem, as well as the diseases they carry. Besides dengue fever and zika, mosquito’s carry malaria. Most volunteers with church groups from abroad pop big orange malaria pills, started two days before a visit and carried on a week after getting home. We are all shot full of strange potions and wipe ourselves down with insect repellent first thing in the morning and last thing at night.
This gecko has eaten his fill on my porch screen, and, for that, is a master of pest control.
I will celebrate his return this evening as he runs up and down my screens like a freestyle rock climber.
I really love the fat lizards who don’t care about looks and wag their tongues, like fingers, as if to say, ” You ain’t gonna eat more than me tonight. ”
Gecko’s are not reptiles that everyone hates.
They have style.
Albert and Bella are two of five dogs at the house.
There are also two cats plus a new Kitty who joined the wrecking crew last night, abandoned in the road and following us home. Next morning it is curled up against one of the dogs on the front step, unaware that cats and dogs are supposed to be enemies, not friends.
There is a horse tied up in the next door vacant lot, two roosters, three hens and nineteen eggs hatching. There are eight pigs, lizards climbing on walls, two new parakeets. A cow grazes close by. Fish are in the river, pigeons are in coconut trees, a spider web is growing where the trunks of two trees meet by a back fence.
Yesterday we saw a Komoto Dragon eyeing the chicken coop but he disappeared when Alma threw a a stone at him that just missed.
This is, Alma says, ” my Gilligan’s Island. ”
I haven’t seen Gilligan but I expect he is hiding out in the hills living off his Social Security, smoking weed for aching joints, and trying to get organized.
These two parakeets are new to the front porch.
The two birds and cage were a thousand pesos, about $20.00. The two of them sing, preen, watch the world from their small enclosure.They are confined, but they are safe.
Sitting below is one of Alma’s cats, looking up, calculating ways to reach them.He caught a mouse yesterday and played with it in the dining room before making it a meal.
Morning sunlight pours into the porch and the green blue white tropical birds share love poems.
This cat is out of luck, but yearning.
These are the makings of a country western song.
Excitement builds during the week .
As Sunday afternoon grows close, the roosters crowing takes on more urgency. On Sunday afternoons, a stadium in a local neighborhood opens for business and men pay for permits to fight their birds.
The fighting cage in the middle of this stadium looks small from the bleachers and the birds inside it are hard to see.However, you can tell how the match is going by listening to the rise and fall of waves of sound. Sound rumbles at the beginning of the fight as birds are primed and hawkers take bets. It crescendos during the match, if it is a good one. At the end, there is almost a silence as the referee picks up a dead rooster who has lost and presents it to the owner of the winning rooster to take home and put in his cooking pot.
Fighting is both human and animal history.
Martial Arts cage fighting makes the old Friday night television boxing matches look tame. Gladiators in Roman extravaganzas bled in the sand and crowds watched the Emperor’s thumb to see if a man lived or died. David and Goliath was a spectacular Biblical fight.
This early round is over quickly and a new pair of animal contestants and their human trainers enter the ring.
I bet a thousand pesos and lose, but next week will be different.
This event, for me, isn’t entertaining.
Betting on life or death isn’t a wager I like to make, especially when animals are involved.
These guys and girls aren’t going hungry.
They are fed in the morning and in the afternoon with snacks in between meals to help them put on weight. They will eat as much as you give them and they always behave as if they are starving.
Alma washes out their cages several times a day and they get hosed down with well water to cool them down. Pigs are fair skinned and mosquitoes bite them awful so a little fire burns in front of their roofed, cinder block pens, the smoke chasing mosquito’s away.
When you come up to their cells the big ones stand up on their back feet,put their front feet on the top of the cinder block wall, stick their snouts towards you and oink. You have to be careful touching them because they can bite.
After pigs eat, they sleep for hours, and grow like babies, fed with dry food scientifically formulated for fast growth, lean meat, tasty meat.
When they get 90 kilos they will go to the market, but not to shop.
Not knowing your fate is a good thing.
If they knew they were going to become barbecue ribs, they would lose their appetites.
Pigs are popular on Marinduque.
They are particularly popular for large family get together’s and celebrations. Like Ecuadorians and Mexicans, Philipino’s like pork and many households have a pig or two staked out in back yard mud holes. On this day, the man who makes his living cooking pigs over a fire, on a spit, comes to get one for a family wedding. After looking in Alma’s pens, he chooses the right sized pig for the celebration, then lifts it out of it’s cage.
The pig squeals and hollers but is no match for this big man.
The pig man grabs one pig foot and ties it with a piece of line, then grabs the other three feet and wraps all four together. Finished, he lifts the squirming squealing pig and carries it to his tricycle. Tomorrow, this pig will be lunch. After a life of indolence, this well fed boy only has a few hours to live and he hasn’t even had a fair trial.
Pigs get slaughtered.
The most important thing to remember is not to name them, and not to get attached. It is hard to love your pork chop when it used to be your pet.
Cats are everywhere in Tulum, Mexico.
These gatos sleep during the day and hunt at night. Even when asleep they can wake instantly, move into a predatory stance, run up a tree trunk to safety amid sea grape leaves. They are used to people, allow themselves to be stroked, take food offerings when they can get them. They have no collars, no tags.
Cats have perfected the art of being asleep and awake at the same time, the art of living in the moment that humans at Yoga Shala work to achieve on their mats, doing deep breathing exercises, twisting their limbs into pretzels, listening to the voice of a guru who is where they want to be.
Studying cats is my plan of the day.
The ability to take cat naps is worth all the study I can give it.
You never know who you will meet on your morning walk.
This burro is grazing by the side of the road, and, moments earlier, posed for a photo with a young man and his girl friend, who then snapped this photo of Scott in reciprocity. The burro decides he isn’t pleased with us and kicks his hind hooves, warning me to stay the proper distance away.
He is a sturdy burro and in Nicaragua he would be hooked to a cart pulling sand and cement bags to a construction job.
Where you are born in this world makes a difference. You can overcome a bad birthplace, but, if I were a donkey, I would be perfectly pleased calling Tulum, Mexico home.
People call this boy an ass, but he has his world by the tail.
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