Today I flooded the electronics business on the first floor with a water hose that flipped out of the washing machine (full blast) when I walked away.
I already did this once last week by hanging the hose on its allotted screw on the wall, but the seal in the spigot was worn out and the valve, which appeared deceptively off, continued seeping water until it gained momentum and rose up out of the upturned hose and down the wall and into the room below. For quite some time. But at a dribble. But a substantial dribble.
Let's discuss what we call a "washing machine" in Belize. It is a plastic surround with two chambers. One - the wash chamber - about 10 gallons, and one - the spin chamber - about 5 gallons. Use the short hose on the wall to fill the Wash chamber with water, toss in soap (Not Too Much, Fabio always says), and drop in your clothes. Then you turn off the water, remove the hose and (with wet hands and possibly feet - safe, I know) plug it in. It will rotate the clothes in the soapy water. After sufficient agitation, you transfer (yes, you, by hand) drenched clothes from chamber Wash into chamber Spin and press them down with your fist to compact them for the best balance in the centrifugal spin.
There is no way in the process not to also wash whatever you are wearing. You will get wet.
This is the nature of laundry in Belize: Wash in chamber 1, Spin in chamber 2, Rinse in chamber 1, Spin in chamber 2. That's if you are Fabio. If you are me, you go for one wash, two rinses.
However, there is the matter of the short hose with a mind of its own. The short hose that caused flooding.
I don't like patience. Which is a whole level worse than not having patience. It means that I don't like even trying to have patience, and it is a terrible flaw. So it is beyond me to stand at chamber Wash with my eyes glassing over until the short hose fills it to the H-for-high mark with water. I put the hose in chamber Wash, turn it to Gush, and go in the kitchen to do something incidental and hopefully remember that I have started to do laundry and go back out in 3 minutes.
Today I went back out in 2.75 minutes and the hose gone amok was like a giant drinking fountain, lofting an arc of water into the air. Into the air and onto the porch floor. The wooden floor with planks that don't quite meet and bear unknown ceiling material underneath for Mr. Greg's electronics shop. Ay yi yi.
I shrieked and threw the next load of laundry onto the swell in a vain attempt to sop it up. I swished towels every which way on the floor but deep in my inner being I knew I was too late. The boards were soaked, the water had run half the length of the porch to the kitchen door already and my Next Load was now filthier than it started.
How could so much water come from such a short hose in just 2.75 minutes? Maybe it was more like 4 minutes, and I did have the hose on Gush after all.
So, I see a future of standing and watching chamber Wash fill with water from now on. And maybe a batch of Sweet Rolls are in order for Mr. Greg, who spent more than an hour sopping up water from the floor in his office downstairs and insisted he did not need help or rags or towels or...dogs to lap it up.
At this juncture I won't go into problems with immigration that made me cry this morning, or the woman in the Chinese store (= corner market) yelling at me for returning bottles to her which I had not Bought from her. (I don't know if she meant to yell or if that is her voice.) And I Had bought them from her store but could not understand her English so I paused blankly when she asked, which led her to believe I Had Not. And the dogs and I all walked away sad for being misunderstood.
But overall, in spite of these tales, it was actually a banner day. We didn't get attacked by local dogs as we went on a mile walk today. (We never get attacked, but their tough dog goal is that we Wonder if we will.) I won Mr. Ben Swiss in a backgammon challenge. I found fresh leaf lettuce at the market (not always available) AND a papaya (ripe tomorrow) and Soursop juice. A near addiction.
I also drank two bags of coconut water because the best news of all today is that my brother lived after he was rushed to the hospital on the brink of death with his heart fibrillating and his kidneys shut down. All from apparent potassium deficiency. ?! Who knew that was possible. So I talked to him , and he is doing well, and I drank coconut water in his honor, which is rife with potassium and an all-around anti-cancer tonic. And in spite of tripping over difficulties today, I'm grateful because the blessings outweighed the disappointments. (Which they always do, if you are counting honestly.)
Signing off for some sleep amid a downpour of rain upon rain on my clothes on the line. That's rinse #3.
Susanna
Saturday, October 26, 2013
Friday, August 30, 2013
Cockroaches, Scorpions and Snakes, Oh my....
It's Friday morning at 7:30 a.m. in the jungle of Belize. The real jungle. A river running outside my cabin, great vines hanging down from tropical trees hosting orchid-like succulents and long, fruit-bearing, Christmas-cactus-like pitaya vines. Cohune palm nuts fall, smacking into piles on the ground and, every time, I am glad I, or one of the dogs, am not under it. Parrots chatter (Loudly) in the tree tops, and a million other birds and insects cry out, though I cannot distinguish one from another. (Some insects make the most bird-like sounds.)
I look back now on how I used to think about things on, say, Wednesday. How cockroaches waking me up in the night crawling on me, sealed inside the mosquito netting with me, seemed so traumatic. How I sprayed the cabin frantically with the prevalent available toxins (which, it’s possible, I could not acquire in the US unless I were perhaps a scientist). How I slept in the fumes of it, calculating how much, if not all, of the battle against cancer that I had waged was now compromised by breathing neurotoxins in my sleep. (I’m not sure if I exaggerate.) How even in the morning roaches were still teetering and falling over - the fumes lasting that long. Ah, but that was Wednesday, a lifetime of lessons ago.
Somehow I could hear Eli's full body wag before I opened my eyes this morning. Something about the cadence of his paws dancing on the wood floor and the tags of his collar clinking off beat, and his puff of breath with the excitement of the wag. Also, the wide, wide, tongue-licking yawn and corresponding whine.
All of this comes at my first stirring in the morning. There's no stretching and repositioning for another 20 minutes of rest for me. Once body movement on the bed is perceived, I am, as far as the dogs are concerned, awake and it is Breakfast Time!
I heard the morning "I am here" growl of Guthrie at the side of the bed. Just a gentle growl deep in his throat that he uses when he thinks I have forgotten he is there. He considers it polite - compared to, say, a sharp bark (which he will use if I do not heed the gentle growl). He doesn't wag his whole body. He is not an energetic dog. But he will stamp his paws each once, wag his tail, and stretch his head up to see over the edge of the mattress with his little growl, watching attentively my closed eyes so at the first flutter of opening, I should see his big brown hound eyes first of all. And then he knows that I know that he exists and is ready for morning.
I smiled at the Gute and stretched in bed and looked up.
What? I had an instant of dismay while my eyes tried to focus on the dark shape on the mosquito netting above me. Not another cockroach... After all of my efforts.
As my eyes cleared, the creature crawled just a bit and stretched his tail and curled it back up and it was not the former worst-possible-sight-on-my-mosquito-net in the morning but a new worst. A big, black, hairy, long, scorpion dangling above my head in the morning light.
I whipped the mosquito netting aside and flew out of bed. I did not think to be thankful about the scorpion's many-legged grip on the net that kept him in place instead of just falling on me as I jostled the whole tent of net to Get Out.
The scorpion calmly kept his place on the net and continued his own morning stretch. I stood barefoot on the floor outside the bed breathing my alarm into hands cupped over my mouth.
Eli's body wag went into full motion with prancing and head bobs. He waggled by the door eager to get out, eager to eat. Elias has always been the most jubilant one about a new day. We could learn from him to be that eager every morning.
Guthrie is a sensitive dog. He stepped toward me from the door, watching me in earnest. Every dog hopes to be helpful and have a purpose.
"Gute, it's a scorpion," I told him. And he perked his ears properly. Is she talking about some kind of breakfast? he wondered.
Then I realized I was barefoot in a cabin full, on Wednesday (a lifetime of lessons ago), of cockroaches. I slid on my sandals, which waited by the bed, and I watched the scorpion. He really seemed to be waking up just like me. Little movements here and there. Hang his tail this way, hang his tail that way. Never poised to sting. No, he was just in the midst of his morning routine. Maybe he liked the sun coming through the window onto the net. Maybe he liked that the cockroaches were gone and he had the place to himself. (Or, alternately, maybe he eats cockroaches and I should have mixed feelings about wanting him to go.)
Fabio taught me regard for scorpions and tarantulas. The first scorpion we saw at my house in the milder jungle of Kontiki was an amazing specimen. It was not ugly and terrorizing or scrawny and skittling in a manner that makes humans feel they are outmatched for speed and maneuverability; it was beautiful and jet black and it marched into the house confidently and slowly, into the middle of the kitchen floor while we were playing a game of scrabble.
“Fabio!” I said with alarm.
“Look at that!” he said with amazement.
“Fabio!” I repeated with alarm.
He was heading over to examine it. I remember he looked at me as though I was missing the point.
"Look at it Susan. It is beautiful."
“Fabio!” I said uncertainly. He was right, and yet - wasn't he too close to it, wouldn't he get stung, and if we don't catch it instantly, won't it scurry away and lay in wait to sting me later...?!
"Let me look at it." he said. And he studied it and he was not afraid it would strike. Then he gently used a container to pick it up and looked at it some more. I think he asked me if I wanted to look at it some more. I think I said no. And he took it outdoors to the jungle and transplanted it there.
I am thankful that was my introduction to scorpions. (I also may, in the retelling of this story, be Downplaying my actual alarm at the time. Writer’s license.) I have seen others since then, of the creepy kind and translucent-y brown/tan, somehow that coloring is the very worst for creepiness. But with Fabio's example, he gave me courage to see past the fear to the Majesty of the thing. God's amazing intricacy and architecture in His creation. I will never forget that first scorpion, and Fabio’s awe, and me developing a smidgen of awe that later grew. I won't forget to have awe about God's amazing assortment of creatures.
It doesn't mean it was easy for me the next time one was in my house.
"Just use a broom and sweep it toward the door, it will not run at you," Fabio said in a sleepy voice. I had woken him at midnight in alarm. I thought it was a crumpled black candy wrapper on the floor and I almost picked it up and then I thought, I don't have any candy in the house, certainly not those black wrapped Halloween taffys. What could that be? So I took a broom to sweep it up and the crumpled wrapper Expanded and Puffed itself up into a full-on scorpion and I freaked, using a certain amount of vibrato.
It was another of the jet-black, stunning variety but not as big, and not slow moving like the first one, but rather completely still as though dead and then darting, and it wasn't as beautiful without Fabio there.
Fabio is right about a lot of things, most things, but not the part about "it won't run at you" That's exactly what it did when I tried to nudge it with the broom, to go around and out the laundry room door, so we need not be in so tight a space that my anxiety easily filled it. Instead it ran toward me and I think that's how I ended up sitting on top of the clothes washer, broom in hand, with my vibrato piercing Fabio's sleeping ear.
In the scorpion's defense, his attacker was the blue, prickly-bristled, broom head moving toward him. His aversion of the broom was not the waging of an attack on me. Still, he, perhaps without malice, made a beeline for me and my feet.
Fabio gave me the strategy of sweeping it into an empty box and carrying it outside for him to see the next day. (Someone else could have squished it, but I have a personal limit on the size of bug I am willing to squish. This exceeded my limit. That and what if it was resilient and didn't squish as I expected and instead weaseled out from under my sandal and over my foot or - God forbid - up my calf. That is the real fear. )
I am already blocking out the image of the scorpion this morning. Was it black like those first ones? Yes, I think so. It was skinnier though and like a little machine put together in segments. A little bit hairy but not so hairy I could not see the segments. Don't worry, I took pictures.
I stood in the cabin, now in my sandals, Guthrie midway between me and the door, his earnest look, assessing my non-breakfast related movements. Eli waggling and waggling and then even Eli stopped. He scanned the room for the problem. They both were quiet trying to perceive the danger I was perceiving.
No, nothing, Eli decided, and re-wagged and head bobbed and gave me the snout-lick morning yawn from the door. It's breakfast-morning time!!
I scanned the room for a Container in which to capture the scorpion, and then looked back to make sure he was still there. He had not dropped to the bed among the pillows to create any kind of Situation or chase scene. No, he was enjoying the morning on My Side of the mosquito net.
I thought of the small quart bucket on the front porch table holding limes and garlic. That was large enough for his whole length without me needing special maneuvering strategies, like putting him one end first into a jar because it was too narrow. I was interested only in simplicity and ease on my part.
I let the pups out and emptied the bucket of its garlic and found a flimsy plastic cutting board piece that would cover the whole top of the bucket. I took a photo of him for posterity and then, to my own surprise, reached easily inside the mosquito netting surround and covered him with the bucket.
The matter about insects is their speed and suddenness of movement. He had none of that, so I did not have to scream. He moved a little at the sudden movement of his net but simply hung on to his morning perch. (This is the point at which I thought to be thankful for his many-legged grip on the net and how he hadn’t fallen onto me, my face, or the pillows.)
Instead of picking him off the inside of the net with the piece of hard plastic to drop him into the bucket, at which activity he may bolt and then I would have to scream, I instead put the plastic on the outside of the net so he was enclosed without knowing it, his mosquito netting platform between the bucket and the plastic. Then I shook the whole apparatus a little and tapped on the plastic and he tried to run but no, my plastic shield was tight to the lid of the bucket. Thus, I did not have to scream. He dropped into the bucket, which was transparent, and I quickly capped it with the plastic piece, sans netting, and took him to the porch.
My heart was pounding. This was my jungle cardio workout. I called Fabio.
“Do you want me to save it for you to look at?” I wondered. He wanted to the last time I captured a scorpion. He finds it fascinating.
No. "I would set it free in the yard," he said, "but you do whatever you want to with it."
He wondered, I think, if I would spray it with my new neurotoxin miracle roach spray, I think. No. That can was long gone. Used the whole thing the Wednesday of the cockroaches. This was Friday after all. (A lifetime of lessons hence.) New day, new pest control system. I walked the bucket across the furthest part of the yard to the jungle. I had the camera on my wrist and was thinking of simply laying the bucket on its side and letting him crawl out back into the wild and taking another picture but I somehow instead (remembering he Could come at me again, once on solid ground, and crawl across my foot or, again, God forbid, up my shin) flung him out of the bucket into the air, into the deep of the jungle.
I do not live in the rainforest exactly. I think that is further south than Belize. This is tropical jungle. (And I don’t know the exact difference.) But still it is rife with insects, bugs, and creatures so numerous (millions) that they have never been even been cataloged. We have no names for them. I am living among creatures unknown to man. How is it I have ONLY had a cabin full of cockroaches and one single scorpion? That should probably be my question. But that is Friday's wisdom. Wednesday I was in tears over the terror of cockroaches and could not have heard it. By Friday I handled a scorpion without incident (a racing heart but, as mentioned, no scream).
A few days before I came, the little black kitten, with white paws, is said to have taken down a fer-de-lance (poisonous snake). I can't even comprehend that. I thought a kitten would be lunch for such a snake.
No, the black-bearded neighbor who lives in the second story of the guest house on the property, above the yellow-orange former resort office where I am allowed to keep my computer and have the best wireless signal yet in Belize, testified that each time the snake went to strike the cat struck first. After 50 strikes, was his estimate, the snake was dead.
I am thankful for two things about this. One, the little black cat, with white paws, is friendly toward me. Two, he killed the fer-de-lance so at least I don't need to worry about snakes.... Well…
Living the jungle adventure,
Susanna
I look back now on how I used to think about things on, say, Wednesday. How cockroaches waking me up in the night crawling on me, sealed inside the mosquito netting with me, seemed so traumatic. How I sprayed the cabin frantically with the prevalent available toxins (which, it’s possible, I could not acquire in the US unless I were perhaps a scientist). How I slept in the fumes of it, calculating how much, if not all, of the battle against cancer that I had waged was now compromised by breathing neurotoxins in my sleep. (I’m not sure if I exaggerate.) How even in the morning roaches were still teetering and falling over - the fumes lasting that long. Ah, but that was Wednesday, a lifetime of lessons ago.
Somehow I could hear Eli's full body wag before I opened my eyes this morning. Something about the cadence of his paws dancing on the wood floor and the tags of his collar clinking off beat, and his puff of breath with the excitement of the wag. Also, the wide, wide, tongue-licking yawn and corresponding whine.
All of this comes at my first stirring in the morning. There's no stretching and repositioning for another 20 minutes of rest for me. Once body movement on the bed is perceived, I am, as far as the dogs are concerned, awake and it is Breakfast Time!
I heard the morning "I am here" growl of Guthrie at the side of the bed. Just a gentle growl deep in his throat that he uses when he thinks I have forgotten he is there. He considers it polite - compared to, say, a sharp bark (which he will use if I do not heed the gentle growl). He doesn't wag his whole body. He is not an energetic dog. But he will stamp his paws each once, wag his tail, and stretch his head up to see over the edge of the mattress with his little growl, watching attentively my closed eyes so at the first flutter of opening, I should see his big brown hound eyes first of all. And then he knows that I know that he exists and is ready for morning.
I smiled at the Gute and stretched in bed and looked up.
What? I had an instant of dismay while my eyes tried to focus on the dark shape on the mosquito netting above me. Not another cockroach... After all of my efforts.
As my eyes cleared, the creature crawled just a bit and stretched his tail and curled it back up and it was not the former worst-possible-sight-on-my-mosquito-net in the morning but a new worst. A big, black, hairy, long, scorpion dangling above my head in the morning light.
I whipped the mosquito netting aside and flew out of bed. I did not think to be thankful about the scorpion's many-legged grip on the net that kept him in place instead of just falling on me as I jostled the whole tent of net to Get Out.
The scorpion calmly kept his place on the net and continued his own morning stretch. I stood barefoot on the floor outside the bed breathing my alarm into hands cupped over my mouth.
Eli's body wag went into full motion with prancing and head bobs. He waggled by the door eager to get out, eager to eat. Elias has always been the most jubilant one about a new day. We could learn from him to be that eager every morning.
Guthrie is a sensitive dog. He stepped toward me from the door, watching me in earnest. Every dog hopes to be helpful and have a purpose.
"Gute, it's a scorpion," I told him. And he perked his ears properly. Is she talking about some kind of breakfast? he wondered.
Then I realized I was barefoot in a cabin full, on Wednesday (a lifetime of lessons ago), of cockroaches. I slid on my sandals, which waited by the bed, and I watched the scorpion. He really seemed to be waking up just like me. Little movements here and there. Hang his tail this way, hang his tail that way. Never poised to sting. No, he was just in the midst of his morning routine. Maybe he liked the sun coming through the window onto the net. Maybe he liked that the cockroaches were gone and he had the place to himself. (Or, alternately, maybe he eats cockroaches and I should have mixed feelings about wanting him to go.)
Fabio taught me regard for scorpions and tarantulas. The first scorpion we saw at my house in the milder jungle of Kontiki was an amazing specimen. It was not ugly and terrorizing or scrawny and skittling in a manner that makes humans feel they are outmatched for speed and maneuverability; it was beautiful and jet black and it marched into the house confidently and slowly, into the middle of the kitchen floor while we were playing a game of scrabble.
“Fabio!” I said with alarm.
“Look at that!” he said with amazement.
“Fabio!” I repeated with alarm.
He was heading over to examine it. I remember he looked at me as though I was missing the point.
"Look at it Susan. It is beautiful."
“Fabio!” I said uncertainly. He was right, and yet - wasn't he too close to it, wouldn't he get stung, and if we don't catch it instantly, won't it scurry away and lay in wait to sting me later...?!
"Let me look at it." he said. And he studied it and he was not afraid it would strike. Then he gently used a container to pick it up and looked at it some more. I think he asked me if I wanted to look at it some more. I think I said no. And he took it outdoors to the jungle and transplanted it there.
I am thankful that was my introduction to scorpions. (I also may, in the retelling of this story, be Downplaying my actual alarm at the time. Writer’s license.) I have seen others since then, of the creepy kind and translucent-y brown/tan, somehow that coloring is the very worst for creepiness. But with Fabio's example, he gave me courage to see past the fear to the Majesty of the thing. God's amazing intricacy and architecture in His creation. I will never forget that first scorpion, and Fabio’s awe, and me developing a smidgen of awe that later grew. I won't forget to have awe about God's amazing assortment of creatures.
It doesn't mean it was easy for me the next time one was in my house.
"Just use a broom and sweep it toward the door, it will not run at you," Fabio said in a sleepy voice. I had woken him at midnight in alarm. I thought it was a crumpled black candy wrapper on the floor and I almost picked it up and then I thought, I don't have any candy in the house, certainly not those black wrapped Halloween taffys. What could that be? So I took a broom to sweep it up and the crumpled wrapper Expanded and Puffed itself up into a full-on scorpion and I freaked, using a certain amount of vibrato.
It was another of the jet-black, stunning variety but not as big, and not slow moving like the first one, but rather completely still as though dead and then darting, and it wasn't as beautiful without Fabio there.
Fabio is right about a lot of things, most things, but not the part about "it won't run at you" That's exactly what it did when I tried to nudge it with the broom, to go around and out the laundry room door, so we need not be in so tight a space that my anxiety easily filled it. Instead it ran toward me and I think that's how I ended up sitting on top of the clothes washer, broom in hand, with my vibrato piercing Fabio's sleeping ear.
In the scorpion's defense, his attacker was the blue, prickly-bristled, broom head moving toward him. His aversion of the broom was not the waging of an attack on me. Still, he, perhaps without malice, made a beeline for me and my feet.
Fabio gave me the strategy of sweeping it into an empty box and carrying it outside for him to see the next day. (Someone else could have squished it, but I have a personal limit on the size of bug I am willing to squish. This exceeded my limit. That and what if it was resilient and didn't squish as I expected and instead weaseled out from under my sandal and over my foot or - God forbid - up my calf. That is the real fear. )
I am already blocking out the image of the scorpion this morning. Was it black like those first ones? Yes, I think so. It was skinnier though and like a little machine put together in segments. A little bit hairy but not so hairy I could not see the segments. Don't worry, I took pictures.
I stood in the cabin, now in my sandals, Guthrie midway between me and the door, his earnest look, assessing my non-breakfast related movements. Eli waggling and waggling and then even Eli stopped. He scanned the room for the problem. They both were quiet trying to perceive the danger I was perceiving.
No, nothing, Eli decided, and re-wagged and head bobbed and gave me the snout-lick morning yawn from the door. It's breakfast-morning time!!
I scanned the room for a Container in which to capture the scorpion, and then looked back to make sure he was still there. He had not dropped to the bed among the pillows to create any kind of Situation or chase scene. No, he was enjoying the morning on My Side of the mosquito net.
I thought of the small quart bucket on the front porch table holding limes and garlic. That was large enough for his whole length without me needing special maneuvering strategies, like putting him one end first into a jar because it was too narrow. I was interested only in simplicity and ease on my part.
I let the pups out and emptied the bucket of its garlic and found a flimsy plastic cutting board piece that would cover the whole top of the bucket. I took a photo of him for posterity and then, to my own surprise, reached easily inside the mosquito netting surround and covered him with the bucket.
The matter about insects is their speed and suddenness of movement. He had none of that, so I did not have to scream. He moved a little at the sudden movement of his net but simply hung on to his morning perch. (This is the point at which I thought to be thankful for his many-legged grip on the net and how he hadn’t fallen onto me, my face, or the pillows.)
Instead of picking him off the inside of the net with the piece of hard plastic to drop him into the bucket, at which activity he may bolt and then I would have to scream, I instead put the plastic on the outside of the net so he was enclosed without knowing it, his mosquito netting platform between the bucket and the plastic. Then I shook the whole apparatus a little and tapped on the plastic and he tried to run but no, my plastic shield was tight to the lid of the bucket. Thus, I did not have to scream. He dropped into the bucket, which was transparent, and I quickly capped it with the plastic piece, sans netting, and took him to the porch.
My heart was pounding. This was my jungle cardio workout. I called Fabio.
“Do you want me to save it for you to look at?” I wondered. He wanted to the last time I captured a scorpion. He finds it fascinating.
No. "I would set it free in the yard," he said, "but you do whatever you want to with it."
He wondered, I think, if I would spray it with my new neurotoxin miracle roach spray, I think. No. That can was long gone. Used the whole thing the Wednesday of the cockroaches. This was Friday after all. (A lifetime of lessons hence.) New day, new pest control system. I walked the bucket across the furthest part of the yard to the jungle. I had the camera on my wrist and was thinking of simply laying the bucket on its side and letting him crawl out back into the wild and taking another picture but I somehow instead (remembering he Could come at me again, once on solid ground, and crawl across my foot or, again, God forbid, up my shin) flung him out of the bucket into the air, into the deep of the jungle.
I do not live in the rainforest exactly. I think that is further south than Belize. This is tropical jungle. (And I don’t know the exact difference.) But still it is rife with insects, bugs, and creatures so numerous (millions) that they have never been even been cataloged. We have no names for them. I am living among creatures unknown to man. How is it I have ONLY had a cabin full of cockroaches and one single scorpion? That should probably be my question. But that is Friday's wisdom. Wednesday I was in tears over the terror of cockroaches and could not have heard it. By Friday I handled a scorpion without incident (a racing heart but, as mentioned, no scream).
A few days before I came, the little black kitten, with white paws, is said to have taken down a fer-de-lance (poisonous snake). I can't even comprehend that. I thought a kitten would be lunch for such a snake.
No, the black-bearded neighbor who lives in the second story of the guest house on the property, above the yellow-orange former resort office where I am allowed to keep my computer and have the best wireless signal yet in Belize, testified that each time the snake went to strike the cat struck first. After 50 strikes, was his estimate, the snake was dead.
I am thankful for two things about this. One, the little black cat, with white paws, is friendly toward me. Two, he killed the fer-de-lance so at least I don't need to worry about snakes.... Well…
Living the jungle adventure,
Susanna
Friday, March 22, 2013
Jungle Hounds and The Greater Good
Today I let the pups run in the early morning when it was only 78 degrees or so. I felt sticky in the heat, but I know by noon the house will be about 82 degrees and still feel like cool air conditioning when I come in from outside where it may climb to 100.
We've come into the Hot Season. It caught us off guard, because of a stretch of unseasonably cool days. Then the heat hit us a few days ago and still Elias and The Gute escaped together and ran off (to my great surprise as I was too hot to even assess my garden or bring in the clothes from the line.) It was a close call that day - they returned an hour later - Eli with heat stroke. He collapsed and I was afraid. Fabio and I had to carry his girth (it took both of us) out onto the grass so that I could cool him down with the hose. He gradually recovered, hour by hour, and returned to himself by the next day.
I can't trust Their sensibilities about these things. If there is a darting creature to pursue, a dog can't be expected to think of his own life before the greater good. (A hound's sense of the greater good being chasing all small creatures to kingdom-come and away from the house). So I let them out early this morning when it was only warm out, not hot. I Cautiously let them out together (which could be foolhardy because they might run to Guatemala or somewhere I cannot easily retrieve them) but they handled it perfectly well, staying in the jungle west of my house, which stretches about 1/4 mile on this hilltop unhindered to a north-south road through Kontiki, and bordered on the south by the east-west road that is my street and on the north by the meandering road into Mosquitoville (actual name). None of the roads are named, as far as I know. Except that in the neighborhood below me, where Fabio and I walk on Sunday evenings, someone made a sign designating Jaguar Street and a few others. But my road and the ones that encircle this hill in a 2 mile radius don't seem to be named.
The dogs stayed close enough that I could hear them bay in their hot pursuit. If I give them an hour to run amok in the bush, then they stay close at hand and come back within 15 minutes of my calling them. (That's our rule.) However, if they have all day, that's when people in Guatemala might have a sighting. They are panting maniacally now, one outside on the grass, the other inside on the tile where I will have to mop later because of the pool of drool. I have mixed feelings about taking these North-Carolina-transplant-to-Wisconsin-now-Jungle Hounds back to the U.S., to city life. If he could catch his breath right now, Gute would tell you this is the best life they've ever had...(and if the afternoon should hold a dinner of any meats or bones, all the better).
Oh, my mistake, the panting has ceased and given way to snoring. I think it will be a very quiet afternoon in the jungle hideaway.
We've come into the Hot Season. It caught us off guard, because of a stretch of unseasonably cool days. Then the heat hit us a few days ago and still Elias and The Gute escaped together and ran off (to my great surprise as I was too hot to even assess my garden or bring in the clothes from the line.) It was a close call that day - they returned an hour later - Eli with heat stroke. He collapsed and I was afraid. Fabio and I had to carry his girth (it took both of us) out onto the grass so that I could cool him down with the hose. He gradually recovered, hour by hour, and returned to himself by the next day.
I can't trust Their sensibilities about these things. If there is a darting creature to pursue, a dog can't be expected to think of his own life before the greater good. (A hound's sense of the greater good being chasing all small creatures to kingdom-come and away from the house). So I let them out early this morning when it was only warm out, not hot. I Cautiously let them out together (which could be foolhardy because they might run to Guatemala or somewhere I cannot easily retrieve them) but they handled it perfectly well, staying in the jungle west of my house, which stretches about 1/4 mile on this hilltop unhindered to a north-south road through Kontiki, and bordered on the south by the east-west road that is my street and on the north by the meandering road into Mosquitoville (actual name). None of the roads are named, as far as I know. Except that in the neighborhood below me, where Fabio and I walk on Sunday evenings, someone made a sign designating Jaguar Street and a few others. But my road and the ones that encircle this hill in a 2 mile radius don't seem to be named.
The dogs stayed close enough that I could hear them bay in their hot pursuit. If I give them an hour to run amok in the bush, then they stay close at hand and come back within 15 minutes of my calling them. (That's our rule.) However, if they have all day, that's when people in Guatemala might have a sighting. They are panting maniacally now, one outside on the grass, the other inside on the tile where I will have to mop later because of the pool of drool. I have mixed feelings about taking these North-Carolina-transplant-to-Wisconsin-now-Jungle Hounds back to the U.S., to city life. If he could catch his breath right now, Gute would tell you this is the best life they've ever had...(and if the afternoon should hold a dinner of any meats or bones, all the better).
Oh, my mistake, the panting has ceased and given way to snoring. I think it will be a very quiet afternoon in the jungle hideaway.
Friday, January 11, 2013
January Rains
It's been raining in Belize day after day. Like a monsoon but not a monsoon (because we don't have monsoons). But steady torrential rain. And then it stops and then it starts and then it stops. There's no hanging out laundry or keeping anything dry. The papaya leaves hanging in my house to dry for papaya tea, which is supposed to be effective against lymes disease, molded. I will have to start again. Fabio will drive through the neighborhood on his motorcycle and spot a papaya tree and ask for a few leaves from a neighbor for me.
All of the dirt and rock that a helpful neighbor (finally) dumped across the road a month ago to fill in not just potholes but impassable pits in the road, has been beaten into soup by the rain. The Subaru fishtails all the way down my road through the mud and slimy rock when I slip into town in the evening to take Fabio a little dinner. (Caponata, made with the long slender light purple eggplants, since the fat round ones seem to overpower it, with celery and garden tomatoes and olives and capers. And red bell peppers from my garden that taste spicy even though they are not hot peppers.)
Elias, who was afraid of rain in the US, stays outside in the white powdery crushed rock under the overhang of the stairs while I visit in town. He loves to be out in the night, even if it's raining, though he still runs for the closet if there's very much thunder or if the barometric pressure skyrockets suddenly (which he believes could forecast not just rain but the end of the world as we know it). Then, when I come back through the gate up the slippery grass and rock covered hill, he yelps wildly as though a lot has happened while I was gone and I should have been there.
I fall into bed. The windows have never been closed in the time I have lived here. You want air circulation all of the time or everything will mold. Makeshift curtains of sarongs and lengths of fabric billow over the windows as the wind picks up. I fall asleep listening to a podcast of Jimmy Stewart in a radio drama from the 1940s on my iPad. It must have been hard for girls of the day not to swoon over the boy-next-door-ness of Jimmy Stewart, I decided.
In the night I wake up at the sound of another downpour, the whole earth being watered, the dog bowls in the yard getting washed out, and the rain barrel overflowing. Somehow even in the rain I can still hear Elias snoring outside my window. The Gute sleeps (day and night) on the day bed in the front room. The Guest Puppy Trixie alternates between sleeping in the basket at the foot of the Gute and sleeping outside in her crate, around the corner from Elias. (Eli will not tolerate her to be near.) Then, at 5 am I hear the loud chugging of a truck, as though it is in my yard, full of men's voices whooping and hollering. It is not in my yard, it is traveling along the road on the other side of the jungle and down the hill, but the sound carries on the humid air. I wonder in my sleep if someone has been robbed.
Now Today is deceptively sunny and what section of grass the caretaker "chopped", as they say (because it often is accomplished with a machete instead of a lawn mower - except at my house where the landlord somehow found a full-on John Deer Riding Mower ), has grown back taller than it started. All the better to hide the tarantulas in the dusk, and the slithery skinny snakes in the day.
Guthrie (the Gute) is stamping his feet now, standing on (his) day bed and growling for a little outdoor time before the rain comes. Or so I thought. I open the bars and he does not go out but keeps stomping. Oh, I am burning another pancake on the stove for my breakfast. Gute is my little fire warden. I toss it in the compost bucket and turn off the flame. I only have 2 tablespoons of maple syrup from Wisconsin left anyway. Better to save it for one last breakfast hurrah another day.
The flimsy plastic table on the patio, my dining room, is all set up for chopping fruit in the rain, under the overhang of the porch. A 26 pound water melon awaits. They had nothing smaller in the striped variety, which always seems to be sweeter here. And a pineapple and two papaya are lined up as well. I hear roosters crowing in the distance and the rustling of leaves in the trees so that I have to look to see if it is wind or rain. The drops start to fall. It's a January morning in Belize.
All of the dirt and rock that a helpful neighbor (finally) dumped across the road a month ago to fill in not just potholes but impassable pits in the road, has been beaten into soup by the rain. The Subaru fishtails all the way down my road through the mud and slimy rock when I slip into town in the evening to take Fabio a little dinner. (Caponata, made with the long slender light purple eggplants, since the fat round ones seem to overpower it, with celery and garden tomatoes and olives and capers. And red bell peppers from my garden that taste spicy even though they are not hot peppers.)
Elias, who was afraid of rain in the US, stays outside in the white powdery crushed rock under the overhang of the stairs while I visit in town. He loves to be out in the night, even if it's raining, though he still runs for the closet if there's very much thunder or if the barometric pressure skyrockets suddenly (which he believes could forecast not just rain but the end of the world as we know it). Then, when I come back through the gate up the slippery grass and rock covered hill, he yelps wildly as though a lot has happened while I was gone and I should have been there.
I fall into bed. The windows have never been closed in the time I have lived here. You want air circulation all of the time or everything will mold. Makeshift curtains of sarongs and lengths of fabric billow over the windows as the wind picks up. I fall asleep listening to a podcast of Jimmy Stewart in a radio drama from the 1940s on my iPad. It must have been hard for girls of the day not to swoon over the boy-next-door-ness of Jimmy Stewart, I decided.
In the night I wake up at the sound of another downpour, the whole earth being watered, the dog bowls in the yard getting washed out, and the rain barrel overflowing. Somehow even in the rain I can still hear Elias snoring outside my window. The Gute sleeps (day and night) on the day bed in the front room. The Guest Puppy Trixie alternates between sleeping in the basket at the foot of the Gute and sleeping outside in her crate, around the corner from Elias. (Eli will not tolerate her to be near.) Then, at 5 am I hear the loud chugging of a truck, as though it is in my yard, full of men's voices whooping and hollering. It is not in my yard, it is traveling along the road on the other side of the jungle and down the hill, but the sound carries on the humid air. I wonder in my sleep if someone has been robbed.
Now Today is deceptively sunny and what section of grass the caretaker "chopped", as they say (because it often is accomplished with a machete instead of a lawn mower - except at my house where the landlord somehow found a full-on John Deer Riding Mower ), has grown back taller than it started. All the better to hide the tarantulas in the dusk, and the slithery skinny snakes in the day.
Guthrie (the Gute) is stamping his feet now, standing on (his) day bed and growling for a little outdoor time before the rain comes. Or so I thought. I open the bars and he does not go out but keeps stomping. Oh, I am burning another pancake on the stove for my breakfast. Gute is my little fire warden. I toss it in the compost bucket and turn off the flame. I only have 2 tablespoons of maple syrup from Wisconsin left anyway. Better to save it for one last breakfast hurrah another day.
The flimsy plastic table on the patio, my dining room, is all set up for chopping fruit in the rain, under the overhang of the porch. A 26 pound water melon awaits. They had nothing smaller in the striped variety, which always seems to be sweeter here. And a pineapple and two papaya are lined up as well. I hear roosters crowing in the distance and the rustling of leaves in the trees so that I have to look to see if it is wind or rain. The drops start to fall. It's a January morning in Belize.
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