Critters Innumerable

It is fitting that after my first visit to sight that I would run across Psalm 104: “You make darkness, and it is night, when all the animals of the forest come creeping out...creeping things innumerable are there, living things both small and great”. I can already tell that the abundant supply of creepy things in the dry forest of Corral de Arena will be one of the most difficult things for me to get used to. The chickens, goats, and turkeys make a mess everywhere but I'll get used to that. Cleanliness is a relative term I'm finding out. I had washed my clothes in site with a bit of Tide and the water we collect in barrels for the day. To me, they smelled really great, felt clean. But when I returned to Santa Eulalia, I realized they actually smelled like chicken poop. Showering is quite similar. We have a “shower area”, but it is really just an area in the backyard with a tarp to cover you. There are vines and sticks that run across the top and the chickens like to hang out up there. I've never had to shower and be afraid of a chicken pooping on my head at the same time. That's new.

Since living in my lovely, tidy house in Santa Eulalia, it hadn't occurred to me that living in the campo would put a new spin on the expression “night life”. All hours of the night, there are things creeping, clucking, hopping and giving me the all-around 'heebie geebies'. The first night, I talked to Lisa before going to bed. Lisa was the volunteer in my town before she had to move into Olmos for health reasons. Now she works with the animal refuge/zoo that is in desperate need for funding. I called Lisa after having gone to the latrine in the dark to find it literally covered in cockroaches. Needless to say, I didn't end up using it. I cut the top off a two liter plastic bottle and used it in my room instead. I called Lisa and she suggested that I buy a specific bucket people use to pee in at night. She also mentioned that she never got used to the critters at night, especially the mice that would run around her bedroom floor at night. That just freaked me out. I decided to sleep with the light on to discourage las cucarachas.

I laid there awake for two hours, keenly aware of every crawl and squeak behind and possibly in my walls. From the sounds, I imagined at least 10 mice. I kept sitting up to check for cockroaches. Two came in at one point. The first one hopped and flew around my room. I didn't realize they could jump so high! One jumped about five feet and even flew around. And ewwww, how fast it could crawl up the wall.

I covered my whole body with my covers and prayed for safety and the ability to fall asleep, a little embarrassed that I'm a grown person afraid of such tiny creatures. I tried reasoning with myself. What could they possibly do to me? Even if a mouse bit me and I got sick, I have doctors I can call. It'll be ok. But there is no such reasoning when it comes to be the insects or animals of any size.

Even worse than the bugs, I would have to say I am more afraid of the dogs. The dogs in my new town aren't your normal canines. These dogs are vicious and fight at all hours of the night, and during the day, in front of my house. The sounds are horrible! It sounds like they are actually tearing each other apart. And over breakfast my last day, I watched about five of them gang rape my little female dog. She was yelping and obviously trying to get away, but the male dogs kept biting her while they each took turns. I ran out and yelled at them with a broom, but they weren't scared of me. I felt sick to my stomach for a few hours after that. I told my program director about the situation. His advise was that I try to find out whose dogs they are and ask them to keep them locked up. If they have no owners, he suggested, in his comedic Peruvian English, that I kill them all over a period of time so that no one will know it's me. I paused for a moment before replying. “How would I go about doing that?” I think I am gonna talk to my host family about the problem, and then go to the mayor. If neither one works, I think I will kill them. After two days of their fighting in my patio at night, I found myself picturing shooting them all with a gun. I've never wanted to kill animals like that.

I'll end this blog with a funny story related to getting used to animals in site. My friend Tina was going to the latrine during her site visit. She peed and then she was getting ready to leave when she heard something russling around in the latrine. She looked down, and there was a chicken who had laid an egg at the bottom of the latrine. Who knows how it got down there, and who knows how they got it out, but they did somehow. I died laughing when Tina told us that she peed on a chicken.