Ticky Joins The Party

Just a quick heads up - there´s going to be a pretty gross picture later in this entry. Nothing bloody or graphic just disturbing. But a heads up anyway as I put the picture on my myspace and someone complained that they almost vomited.

Toughen up kids, the world is a rough place.

Back on track: I am now the proud owner of the best $10 duct-tape engineering Nicaragua has to offer. I bought a bike. It is an enormous pìece of shit, enormous. It has no suspension. One of the links in the chain is bigger than the rest so about every six or seven seconds you get a spine crunching, grinding jolt as the big link goes through. It is hideous. It suffers from some sort of bike epilepsy that causes the rear end of it to wiggle all the time. The kickstand staunchly refuses to stay up.

But it has a banana seat. And I adore it. A banana seat!

Nothing in Nicaragua gets thrown out, really - it just gets cobbled together and re-used. There are no thrift shops here. You fix and mend things until they are no longer fixable or mendable and then you grudgingly sell them for scrap metal or whatever. My bike is a veritable Franken-bike, reconstructed from pieces of a million dead bikes by the bike repair guy around the corner. The frame is probably a 1960´s or 70´s children´s bike. It has enormous motocross tires. God only knows where the hell the seat came from.

Maybe you could paint it, Noel suggests. In my bad spanish I tell him that all the paint en el mundo is not going to help this.

When I am locking it up outside the internet cafe the other day the woman who runs it comes out. I don´t think, she tells me, you really need to lock that thing up.

I do anyway. Bikes here are stolen all the time. Part of my goal in buying the ass-ugliest bike in Nicaragua was to avoid the hassle of having a bike stolen. No one is stealing this piece of shit. No one.

And the bell works, too. Ding ding.

I´m still on work break, now in Leon with my friend Kristen. A few days back we were on Ometepe Island. I cannot stress how bad the dog problem is in this whole country, not just Granada. This dog below was hanging out on the main street. While we were there we kept buying him food - hot dogs, ham, leftover chicken. But this dog sleeps in the dust next to the bus station off the ferry docks where a million tourists walk by him every day. Even though Nicaragua doesn´t have enough money or resources to deal with it´s animal issues, there´s something about the situation that makes me angry. How has this dog been allowed to get this bad? How can all of these well-fed white eco-tourists walk by this every day and do fucking NOTHING? I´m sure some of them do what we did - buy food or what-have-you but I saw tons of them walk right by it again and again and do nothing. When we were walking around a restaraunt owner came out to try to chase it away by hitting it with a chain. A CHAIN. Kristen and I said something and he stopped. The other gringos on the porch - and there many - did nothing.

Conversely the Volcano Tour Guide company people - all Nicas - save all their lunch leftovers to feed this dog every day. Johan, the Nica guy who owns the company, was feeding him some empanadas while I was waiting for Kristen. 'This dog', he tells me, 'it probably will not live much longer. But every day we give it some food and think maybe today, it will have another day. It is a nice dog. It deserves more days.'

There are times when animal welfare in this country feels like rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic. There are so many - so very many - all over the country and so little organizations that do anything about it. It's tough. Picture below is another street dog running around Granada. This one is too squirrelly to even get close to. It looks a lot worse closer up.

On a happier note, though, we did do another spay/neuter clinic here last weekend. Dr. Tom is in town. Or at least Casa Lupita did another clinic. I was only in town for a brief few days so I stopped in. And Toni, Nick, Claudio and Tom are like a finely tuned machine. They've done a bunch since I was here last year and as a result they just ROLL through it. A bunch of other ex-pats showed up to help with the surgery stuff, too, so as a result I was sort of human clutter. I hung out, washed a few instruments, ran some errands with Donna and then took off again to get ready for this leg of the trip.

Dr. Tom had a neighbor who wanted their cat spayed but didn't have a way to get it over there. When Donna and I went to pick it up we spotted one of the neighborhood street dogs - an older looking dog with funky eyes that hangs out near the pulperia near my house. I went in and asked Esperanza, the woman who owns the pulperia, if the dog belonged to anyone. Perro de calle, she said. Dog of the street. She said it didn't so we scooped it up and tossed it into the back of the truck, too, and I jumped in the back to hold it while we rode back. More the merrier.

I actually know this dog - I did a few weeks of ivermectin laced hot dogs with it when I got here because it had some sarna which cleared up. It's a friendly enough thing but I'd never patted it, just tossed it the dogs and went about my way. I noticed it's ears were kinda funky, stuck up at odd angles, but never really thought about why. When we got back to the clinic we figured out why.

This is where it gets graphic, kids.

Yes, that is exactly what it looks like. Ticks. Thousands of them. Every single bump you are seeing there is a tick. So many that it's ears were sort of forced sticking up from them. They were also all over his body, clustered around his eyes, between his toes, everywhere. All the different species. Some engorged, some not. Some actually feeding off the engorged ones.

Donna and Joyce got some tweezers and a glass of alcohol and started picking. They filled and emptied the glass fourteen times in eight hours and he was still covered. They bathed him and a billion more came off. They were covered in ticks. Everything was covered in ticks.

Meet Ticky, the newest clinic resident.

Of course Donna gave him a nice name - Ramon. Of course I will call him nothing but Ticky.

For over seven hours Donna and Joyce did nothing but pick ticks off this poor dog. I'd like to say I've never seen anything like this here before but we have. If anyone wonders why I was begging, borrowing and stealing any Frontline plus, Advantage, all that crap, before I left this is why.

They went ahead and neutered him and checked his blood. Surprise surprise, like eighty percent of the dogs here he has erlichia, a tick born disease. But he is friendly and sweet and gregarious and has moved into the clinic for the interim. Now that he has started to regain some of his strength we figured out he is actually a younger dog. All the ticks make dogs weak, anemic. In the absence of his tick infestation he jumps around, plays, runs. He and Porsha dig each other. It's cool.

I would love to post more pics of him now but I'm actually back from Leon now - again, only for a few days, more on that later. But I have no pictures. Because my camera got boosted in Leon. Luckily I downloaded the pics in this entry prior to leaving for Leon.

In all the time I've spent in this country I've never had anything boosted. And whoever took it out of my bag took only that - they left all my cash, my passport, my credit card. All of which I would have rather have had stolen than my camera as I use it so much for this blog. I hope karma bites someone in the ass really badly for that. I really do. May they get scabies - sarcoptic mange/sarna. But tomorrow I go on a camera hunt to buy another one.

Porsha had her eye removed and got spayed and looks great. Once I get another camera - and I will but it will cost me out the ass here - I'll put up new pictures. The puppy is the size of a small car. Again, hope to have pics later.

Only one more week of me being here and there and everywhere and then I will return to my normal posting schedule. In the interim I should have another odd interlude post about travels, odd coincidences and other non-animal related events.

To Karen Foster, the other Karen, all the people who sent money to the Building New Hope site but didn't mention this blog - I thank you. They thank you. Ticky thanks you. Porsha, Freda and the enormous puppy thank you. Though the fifteen million ticks we assassinated while cleaning Ticky up probably aren't grateful. But honestly, you rock.

Spud-Hunting And A Few Updates

It’s a good thing I injected myself with dog penicillin this morning, I tell Donna, it will help with the tuberculosis.


The great thing about Donna is that she pays absolutely no attention to my odd bouts of rampant hypochondria. A few weeks back when we were returning The Potato to the lakeside she took a corner too fast and I, riding in the bed of the truck with The Potato, was thrown hard into a bar in back of the cab. For hours afterwards I bitched about my shoulder. Despite my repeated bitching that it was sprained, she never acknowledged what I was saying. She just talked about The Potato, the clinic, the fifteen million other projects she was working on. It wasn’t sprained, incidentally - just an ugly bruise.


I don’t know if she’s amazingly single minded, doesn’t listen, or just has an awful lot of experience with volunteers who turn into crazy hypochondriacs when confronted with tropical third world countries with over-the-counter antibiotics.


We are on a Spud Hunt. It’s Semana Santa, the holy week, the biggest vacation week of the year for Nicas and we are driving down a very crowded lakeside trying to find The Potato. Not to bring him back in, just to check on him, give him some food and water and some meds I’ve secreted in hot dogs.


For the record I did not inject myself with dog penicillin - I pricked myself with the needle while drawing up the drug for a feral cat neuter Toni and Nick were doing. And I don’t have tuberculosis. We just had this bizarre detour that involved taking a guy who just drank Clorox to the hospital along with a cop who came along for the ride. It was one of those incredibly odd only-in-the-life-of-Donna things - you go looking for a dog and the cops flag you down to drive a guy to the hospital. At the hospital they had a big poster about tuberculosis thus convincing myself that the chest cold I cannot shake is actually tuberculosis and not the result of insomnia issues, an iffy diet, a refusal to take care of myself - let myself rest and get over it.


Donna is talking about the who guy who drank Clorox. How the hell do you do that by accident? She asks me. As a woman who just injected myself with dog penicillin even I don’t have irony enough to make a snarky comment about a guy drinking Clorox. Who turned out to be fine, incidentally. While we were driving to the hospital Clorox Guy was making calls from his cell phone.


We go by the restaurant where the night caretaker occasionally feeds The Potato. Lo and behold, there he is, lying under a tree. And surprisingly he looks great. Or if not great at least better. Great is a long ways off for The Potato. But his face is fuzzy, as are his paws - he’s actually growing fur. And the crust is starting to come off of him. His feet seem less swollen. All the drugs we pumped into him during his brief clinic stay as well as the antibiotic laced hot dogs we’ve given to the night caretaker seem to be doing something.

The fur on his face to me, though, is the real story. I have never been so glad to see peach fuzz in my life. Now along with the four forlorn hairs sticking up off his shoulder he has the beginnings of actual fur - fur.


There is a little girl and boy sitting on the outbuilding next to The Potato’s tree. The little girl - maybe about seven - is staring at me. When I look up at her she doesn’t look away. She meets my eye, smiles shyly. While we hand The Potato his medicated meat and fill his food bowl she continues to look at me.


The owner of the restaurant comes over. My daughter - he tells Donna - has been feeding him. She makes sure he has food. You should give her a little reward.


The little girl looks away.


Donna goes back to her car for something and I go talk to her. Como se llama? I ask her. Daniella, she tells me. Something about her strikes me. Yes, she’s a beautiful little kid but her humanity, her compassion kills me. No one wants anything to do with this ugly scaly thing and she’s been tending to him. Sometimes, like with Corissa, there is amazing courage in compassion. This is not only a sarna dog but the grossest of the sarna dogs, a pariah. And little Daniella is not afraid or repulsed.


Me llamo Finn, I tell her. Feen, she says. Si, Finn. Mucho gusto Danielle. The man introduces the little boy, Luis, and himself. Donna comes back. You should grow up to be a veterinarian, she tells Daniella. We have a veterinarian coming to our clinic. You come and watch for a day, help out.


Luis could be a veterinarian too, his father insists. Yes, Donna agrees. But the real story here is this beautiful, compassionate little girl.

The Potato finishes his food and toddles off. Donna goes to get more to leave with Daniella. Only half tonight, she tells her. We’ll be back in the morning with more medicine for him. Daniella listens to Donna so seriously, nodding her head.

We go to leave and I come back for my water bottle - I left it there. As I’m coming back I see Daniella carefully carrying a bucket of water over to the food tray we left for The Potato. She empties out the old water, refills it with the new water.

Mucho gusto, Daniella, I say again as I leave. Her father smiles, no, no no, mucho gusto por todos. Si, por todos, I say. But Daniella is smiling shyly at the ground, proud to have been noticed, picked out as special by Donna and I.

What a good kid.

Poltergeist Part II - The Real Bad Ass.

I didn’t even hear the trap hit last night. I set it, went to bed. When I get up in the morning I half remember and go to check it. It seems to have moved a few feet from the alcove but is still covered. I lift up the towel and immediately a paw swipes at me, hisses, growls.

We got a feisty one.

It’s a gray and white cat, rangy, male, with some old fight wounds. In some spots the fur on it’s face is rubbed off - probably the result of trying to get out of the cage. Apparently in it's fight to get out of the trap it actually managed to move the whole 15 lb contraption. And it is pissed, furious in a way the other cat wasn’t. When I try to move the cage it makes frenetic attempts to get at my hand, slams it’s head into the wire walls, frantic to get out. It looks like a housecat, it’s the same species as anyone’s housecat but this thing is a wild animal, cornered and desperate.

There is no way I’m getting this one in a cab. Someone will get bitten. Or several people will with me being first in line.

I call Toni and Nick. Got another one. Not going to be able to get this one in a cab or carry it the six blocks to the clinic. They agree to come over with their bicycles and we’ll try to figure something out. Nick balances it on his crossbar and walks, pushing the bike. In the cage the cat cowers, eyes huge, ears pinned.

They do a sedative shot through the cage but this one doesn’t want to go down. Too much adrenaline. Toni hits it again. A few minutes later it gets wobbly, pliant. They put it on gas.

Five minutes of surgery and kitty is ready to go. Toni carefully puts antibiotic cream on some of the fight wounds, treating it as respectfully as if it was an owned cat. We put it back in the cage, take it to an upper level kennel outside, drape the door with a sheet for shade and privacy and let it recover.

When I go back that night it is awake, wide eyed, furious at the universe. Donna comes and picks me up and we drive it back to my house, re-release it in the courtyard. It’s still drunk from the drugs and it staggers around the garden, cowers behind some trees. My roommate and his friends come in. I point it out. Don’t try to pat the kitty, I tell them. It’s the devil. When it sobers up it will find it’s way back up to the rooftops.

A few hours later I hear a few muffled thumps coming from the roof. Satan Kitty has found it’s way back up there again. Over the next few days we catch glimpses of some new roof cats in the kitchen - an a long haired black one, an eerie eyed grey cat lurking on the stairwell. Neither the rough older one we did or the original black and white poltergeist is seen again. Apparently we’ve been crossed off their list of places to go through the garbage and other ones are moving in to claim the territory.

Time to bust out the trap again.

Some Updates

My friend Kristen arrived with a new cat trap and a box full of toys and leashes. All the clinic dogs now look stylin’. Quixote and Freda immediately fell upon the tug of war toy and had a blast.

Quixote left this morning for his new home outside of Rivas with a Peace Corps volunteer. Apparently he loves his new people and was psyched to begin life as an actual house dog. Godspeed, Quixote. We left the toy for Frida but I’m sure someone there will have a coke bottle to throw for him. He was a goofy bastard but I’ll miss him.

Porsha continues to improve in leaps and bounds, physically. She never had any attitude issues - she’s heartbreakingly submissive with the other dogs and loves people. But to date she’s put on ten pounds and looks almost like a normal dog, give or take some scarring and a missing eye. Dr. Tom will be here this week to spay her and look at the eye, see if we can at least sew it shut or something. She will always have some scars - a cord grew into her neck at some point in her earlier life and she’ll wear that scar for life - but she’s about three weeks away from being a normal dog. A normal homeless dog. Have I mentioned enough that we can ship dogs?

Right before I left on my little jaunt I gave her and Freda baths. Someone in the States really needs to adopt Porsha if for no other reason than she can teach a class for American dogs on How To Handle A Bath With Dignity. The whole time I was scrub-brushing off her dead skin she stood stock still, occasionally wagging her little half tail. No theatrics, no squirming, no fussing.

Freda is lonely without Quixote but doing well, putting on weight. She’s become quite attached to the toy Kristen brought and carries it around with her trying to get one of us to play tug of war with her. Because of her baby she can’t really be treated so she’s lookin’ a little bald but good. Think Bruce Willis as a lactating, sarna infested street dog.

The good news is that the puppy now has it’s eyes open and is walking. The bad news is that it’s some sort of freakish mutant puppy that doubles in size every day. It is ginormous. Huge. Still much beloved, still adorable but porky.

Spud-hunting has become a regular occurrence. Despite her eighteen million other obligations Donna goes out every morning looking for him. While she has not seen him, Daniella has and continues to feed him. Last week when my friend Kristen first arrived we spotted him out by the lakeside, hanging out with a female dog with some sort of back injury. I was able to pat The Potato but couldn’t get near his girlfriend. I was also able to confirm that he is continuing to grow some fur.

I’ll be in El Salvador avoiding potential future deportation when the vet is here but the plan is to bring The Potato in briefly so Dr. Tom can get a look at him and possibly neuter him if he’s well enough. I really doubt the world needs any scaly little Potato Babies. Hopefully he’ll also be able to get a look at the Esso Station dog.

In preparation for the vet’s arrival cat trapping is going into high gear. Additionally signs are posted all over Granada advertising the free sterilization clinic.

Dr. Tom also does a lot with horses so they’ll be a one day clinic for the working horses while he’s here. Apparently a farrier from the states will be in that day as well. So they’ll float teeth, deal with some of the parasites and work on their feet. It’s a tough, tough life for the working horses here. Last year I was here for one of the horse clinics and it was really interesting even if I am crap-terrified of dealing with horses.

There’s a tentative plan for me to have breakfast with a woman in San Salvador during my jaunt up there to do a little recon mission. Apparently she’s interested in doing something similar in the city and wants to talk about logistics. I am probably the least qualified person to do this except a) I’ll be in El Salvador and b) I’m willing to do it. But it’s an exciting idea. Maybe sometime in the future bring up a bunch of cat traps and some equipment and do a blitz there.


Onwards and upwards. And all that crap.


**A few notes on this blog entry - part of it was started prior to me going out of town - the Spudhunt and trapping the second feral occured days before I left. The rest of it I just wrote. I am only in Granada for a few days before taking off again for five more days. Then home to Granada for the forseeable future. But there's a couple more entries I'm working on about stuff that happened either directly before I left or while I was gone or in the few days since I've been back. We saw The Potato again today and he's still getting better. So the next week will be more choppy posting before I get back to the regularly scheduled program.

And the pic at top is for the spay/neuter clinic being held the next few days while Dr. Tom is here. I won't be here for most of it but since I was last here they've trained better surgery assistants than I could ever be. When I was here last year I was the only game in town, surgery assistant wise. Now they've got a bunch of other folks trained and a great system. It's a little sad to be on the sidelines for it but I'm so glad that they're rockin' it out. And I'm better at the mangy-street-dog-and-daily-clinic-and-meds thing anyway seeing as most of my vet tech experience involved killing things.

Horse picture is from my last trip here.

And I am over my chest cold. Or tuberculosis. Or whatever it was.***

Honestly, There Will Be An Update Tomorrow But In The Meantime A Porsha Pictorial

I is typing my little fingers to the bone and hitting our gossip network for what's been going since I've been out of town. I have to go to El Salvador next week. Visa stuff, gotta check in and check out of the country so I don't overstay my visa. Plus Donna has a woman up there who wants to do something similar in San Salvador so I might go have breakfast with her. I am not a vet and as I have said before, I am a cog in the wheel of the heroes who do this day in and out but I can run a recon, if need be.

In the meantime, though, I wanted to show you all something insane.


This is Porsha, AKA One Eye as she appeared when we brought her in about three weeks ago. Not about to win Westminster. Short-listed for Most Pathetic Creature To Still Have A Pulse.

And this is Porsha now:


Yes, Westminster is still a ways off. But she's put on weight, she has hair, the amazing Dr. Tom will be here Monday to spay her and check out the eye. In the states she would have been an immediate euth at the shelter - too far gone. Here, with nothing but some invermectin tablets, some antibiotics, buckets of dog food - we have a real, actual, sweetheart of a dog on our hands.

Go figure.

Real entry tomorrow, as I said, as verbose and wacky as my usual ones. But I did want to post that. And also to do a quick name check to my BFF, my Baby Doll of Evil, Sheena AKA The Food Lady. A goodly percentage of the people who don't know me and are reading this found me through her blog. It's also her blog that made me get my own as opposed to my usual myspace-ing. She's my hero. Rock on, sista, and get your ass and your camera down here. We's got some work to do.

A Brief Moment of Extreme Humility

I'm still out of town and out of the loop but I just wanted to take a minute to say thank you. I am blown away by all the people who have contacted me to compliment me or ask me how they can help. Thank you. All of you.

If you do want to help the most obvious way is donations. A little money goes a long way down here and anything helps. You can donate via paypal on the Building New Hope website - http://www.buildingnewhope.org/. The website also has a mailing address where you can mail a check. I'm pretty sure you can specify that the money be used for the clinic, Casa Lupita.

Additionally you can use Goodsearch - http://www.goodsearch.com/ - for your web searches. Where it allows you to specify what charity where you want the money to go just select Building New Hope.

One of the other biggest needs is homes for these guys. Both Porsha and Freda are needing homes. Both are great dogs, both would adjust well to just about any new home. It's an expensive proposition to ship dogs to the States but it has been done by us before. It would mean a lot to me if we could start finding some options for these guys. Plus as one leaves it opens up another space in the clinic for another dog that needs our help. Think on it.

But all pleas aside: thank you. I am humbled and honored.

New updates on The Potato, Freda, Porsha, the pup coming this weekend. We also have the amazing Dr. Tom in to do a spay/neuter blitz. Plus a farrier to work with the carriage and hardware store horses.

On The Road...

I´m taking a few days off and doing a little bit of travelling so there´ll be no posts for about a week. But watch this space...

Finn

Another Interlude: La Vida Absurd

I love this country - God knows I love this country. Currently I’m on my third time here. I have spent a substantial chunk of the last year here. I have given up jobs, cars, etc to come back here time and time again. So please don’t take what I am about to say as a condemnation of this country that I love.

This place is fucking ridiculous.

It is. It’s a ridiculous country. As an American I am used to certain things - efficiency, quiet, predictability. One of the things I love best about Nicaragua is that these are not priorities in this country - through the rabbit hole, Alice, straight through the bunny hole. Every now and again, though, I have my horrific-Gringa days, my Ugly American days where I would kill for a government agency with an actual computer system, a noise ordinance, a vague idea as to when it is the garbage might get picked up or when the power is going to cut out.

Case In Point, The Popularity of the Relojeria.

Time is a very loose thing here. Everything runs on Nica Time which means things happen when they happen and there’s really no sense in getting upset about it. Appointments are sort of suggestions - no one actually turns up on time.* Posted hours are approximate if they even exist on stores or cafes. The closest internet and call center to my house is painted with a big sign: 9 AM - 9 PM. Sometimes they open at 8 AM, sometimes they don’t open until about noon or so. Some days they don’t open or they close at 6 PM or 11 PM. The woman who runs the Pulperia closest to my house - a sweet, wonderful woman who is enormously patient with my crappy Spanish - doesn’t have posted hours. But she takes a nap every day and closes the store for a few hours. She takes her nap when she feels tired. On several occasions I have found myself fiending for a Coca Cola light, a piece of her pineapple pie or desperately needing a bottle of water and found myself standing in front of her locked door.

For a while I attempted to predict when she would take her nap. I finally gave up.

Herein lies the irony: around the Mercado are several relojerias. You see them all over Nicaragua. Reloj is watch. Relojerias are stores and stands that do nothing but fix and sell watches. Apparently they are popular and successful enough here that several can stay in business within blocks of each other.

Who is buying these watches? Why? What are they doing with them? Who in this country needs a watch? I see people wearing them but for the love of God, why?



Exhibit B: Mail/Everyone Loves A Receipt.

Before I say anything about this I would like to say how grateful I am to once again have American conditioner. Don’t get me wrong. I am swimming in gratitude. And aloe vera. Swimming in gratitude and aloe vera.

One week before I left I sent myself a package of stuff. Toiletries, primarily. At the US post office they told me it should take 6-10 days to get here. As I am currently up on week four sans moisturizer choices, I finally started inquiring about this. Nothing has shown up at Santa Lucia Social Club. I ask Rina, who is minding the place, about it. Have you gone to the post office? She asks me. I hadn’t. We hadn’t gotten a notice that there was a package. It’s probably there, she says, go ask.

Today I go to the post office and explain the situation. They are so nice - so very nice. They have a whole room full of packages and they basically have me go through them to see if I can find mine. I can’t. They open an ancient file cabinet and start handing me packages out of that. None are mine but I think I probably could have signed for any of them.

Eventually it is decided: my package is not there. Again, they are so nice, so polite and apologetic about it. They have me write down my name and phone number in case it turns up. I go up to the front office to buy stamps when they call me back. The woman is proudly clutching my package - unharmed, intact. I have to sign for it. When they look it up to have me sign for it I see the date it arrived at their post office: ten days ago.

Quick moral to this story, kids: if you mail me anything more than an envelope LET ME KNOW. My conditioner would have sat back there for all eternity had I not known it was coming.

It costs me 5 cords - about .27 - to retrieve my package. Again: twenty seven cents. I pay and go to leave and the woman flags me down - senora, una momenta. She is writing something. I assume I will have to sign something else. I wait. A minute later she hands me a handwritten receipt for my package fee. They don’t keep a copy of it or anything. Did she think I was going to return my package and want my .27 back? She doesn’t write me a receipt for the 40 cords worth of stamps I bought, only the 5 cord fee.

When I walk to the Malecon, the Lakeside area, I am always given a little receipt for my five cord entrance fee, a little pre-printed thing that probably costs more to print than it costs to get in.

They love receipts here. Love them. And they have weird little systems that are completely indecipherable to anyone else that they adore as well.

The Weird Little System Issue.

I am in a children’s store buying a ball for one of the clinic dogs. You cannot get dog toys here and I’m sick of throwing empty diet coke bottles for Quixote to fetch. By the third or fourth throw he‘s always eaten them.**


It’s a little store - the size of a large storage closet, maybe. There are two people working in it, two women. I point to the ball behind the counter - 30 cords. She takes it off the shelf, pulls out a receipt book and writes me a receipt for it. I go to pay her and she shakes her head vehemently and points to the other woman, who is literally two feet away from her. I lean over and hand the other woman my receipt and the 30 cords. She beams at me, stamps it with a ‘paid’ stamp and hands it back to me. I then hand it back to the first woman who hands me my ball and gives me the stamped receipt back with it.

I do not take a step to do this. I just pass the receipt between one woman and the next.

Quixote never even gets the ball. On the way home a dirty little street kid in Parque Central, maybe five years old is, following me. I have a can of juice and they follow you to get the can for a deposit. If you have leftovers, if you’re coming out of a restaurant, they’ll ask for those as well. I give the kid the can and the ball. He is delighted.

I’ll buy Quixote another one. In the meantime he’s never had anything but a bottle to fetch so he doesn’t know he’s missing out on anything.

But I’ve had the two party receipt thing happen to me in a bunch of stores. In pretty much every case the store is almost empty and the two people I have to hand things back and forth to are literally right next to each other.

Denouement: Do They Have Reggaeton in Heaven? And if they do, can it be counted as Heaven?

My room is painted bright yellow with a huge high ceiling. Bright yellow. The picture below was taken in my room with the light off and no flash. Just the yellow wall. Towards the ceiling is a big grated window. When the sun comes up every morning it bathes the room in an otherworldly yellow glow.

I am not a morning person. Not at all.

Most days if it wakes me up I’ll fumble around for a shirt, throw it over my eyes and go back to sleep looking like a hostage. If you throw another variable into the mix the shirt-over-my-eyes trick doesn’t work.

This morning, six am. The sun wakes me up. Sometimes I forget where I am and it’s a creepy thing to wake up to, this yellow glow. Am I dead? Should I be heading towards something right now? The grate, maybe, with all the light? It can be a little disorienting, particularly if I wake up thinking I’m still in Denver.

So I wake up thinking I might be dead, throw the shirt over my face and……it’s reggaeton time! My neighbors are doing some sort of home construction project that requires an early start and lots and lots of loud reggaeton. Reggaeton, as far as I can tell, is any pop song with a bad dance beat behind it. I heard a reggaeton version of ‘Every Time You Go Away’ - that 80’s song. It’s annoying enough in mid-afternoon. At 6 AM it can almost make you cry.

Again, let me reiterate: I love this country. Some of the things I love most about this country are the same things that drive me insane. But yeah, reggaeton, 6 AM. Brings out the Ugly American in me.

Though conditioner and a moisturizer selection do make it better.

As well as the fact that you can buy a machete in any hardware store for about $3. Not that I've ever bought one but surely that can be counted as a plus.



* I am just as guilty of this as anyone else is. It's not my fault, though. Granada is a city but it's also a small town and everyone walks or bikes everywhere. You cannot get from point A to point B without running into someone you know and winding up in a conversation. It does not matter if points A and B are five feet from each other and you just got here yesterday. This is a fact of life here.

** Whenever I do this all I can think of is telling my own spoiled dogs with their chicken wrap treats and tons of toys “You know there are dogs in third world countries that have nothing but empty bottles to play with”.

Top picture is one of the flowers in my courtyard with fallen mangoes under it.

Roof Cats & The Esso Station Dog

It sounds like a frickin’ poltergeist, my housemate John says. That’s some scary shit.

We are sitting at the table in the courtyard eating food from one of the chicken ladies on the street. John is the person to go get food with - he’s been here since October, speaks flawless Spanish and works with a primarily Nica organization. He was the one who showed me that the chicken ladies - women who set out huge grills on the sidewalk at night and sell food - have more than chicken. So I probably shouldn’t call them chicken ladies anymore.

Upstairs the yowling and growling continues, creepy and unrelenting. It’s one of the roof cats, a black one. It’s gotten particularly bold and when it smells food it starts making scary noises, probably to scare the other roof cats away. Once we leave it’ll come in and knock the garbage over to go through it for the scraps.

A horrible gurgling noise is coming from the stairs. It’s not even waiting for us to finish. It’s come off the roof and is hiding in the stairwell.

There’s whole colonies of feral cats that live along the rooftops in Granada. All the houses are connected so the cats just go up and down the street. Most houses, ours included, have courtyards in the middle with open air kitchens. The roof cats exist off the garbage, steal anything left on counters, fight and scream and yowl all night. You can hear them running back and forth on the clay rooftops.

Lest anyone think these could be made into happy little pets, don’t. These things are terrifying. Feral cats in the states are scary enough to handle - their Nicaraguan counterparts are monsters. Generation after generation of them have never been touched and they’re tough enough to fight off domestic cats, dogs that people might have in the courtyards they raid. No one is making friends with these things. Believe me.

In the past Casa Lupita has trapped some roof cats in other neighborhoods, brought them in and fixed them and re-released them. If you kill them more just come in to take their place. If you can fix them and release them, it mellows out some of the fighting, the amount of kittens running around. It also lessens the likelihood that it will contract FIV. Neuter them and they live longer.

It’s time for the roof cats of Calle Santa Lucia to be emasculated. Starting with the snarling black poltergeist on the steps.

The next night I bust out the one remaining humane trap Casa Lupita has - the other one got stolen. I explain to the other people in the house what I’m doing. Allen has tuna for lunch and donates part of the can to the cause.

I stay up late that night, don’t set the trap until around midnight to minimize the amount of time whatever winds up in it will have to stay in there. By tomorrow night it will be back on the rooftops, just a little mellower. We have a dark little alcove under the counter and I put the trap there, bait it, cover it with a towel.

Twenty minutes later I am lying in bed when I hear the sound of the garbage being knocked over. Five minutes after that I hear the snap of the trap being triggered.

We have a winner. Ding ding ding.

I throw on some clothes and go out to look. It’s like Christmas morning - everyone who is still up wants to see what’s in the box. When I reach for the towel it swipes out a paw, tries to get me. Hunched in the back of the trap, it snarls and hisses. One of my housemates notes that it’s smaller than he thought it would be. Everything is smaller here - animals, people. We recover it with the towel, go to bed. That night the other roof cats get into a screaming match on the roof. The one in the cage never makes a noise.

Early the next morning I call Toni, let her know I got one. She and Nick meet me at the clinic. Since the last time I was here Toni has not only been trained to assist in surgery, she can do neuters. The cat has mellowed significantly, probably from being awake in the cage all night, terrified. Nick holds him while she does an intramuscular shot of sedatives. Five minutes later he’s out cold.

The surgery itself literally takes minutes. Despite how tough it is it’s a young cat, barely an adult. Afterwards she nicks a corner of it’s ear off so if we trap it again we know it’s already done and will just let it go.

We put it back in the trap and leave it, trap and all, in an upper kennel to recover from the anesthesia. When I come back tonight it is awake, crouched in the back of the trap, furious. I start to walk home with it to release it but neighborhood kids keep running out to see it, trying to stick their fingers in the cage, ignoring my pleas of 'no no no, es gato malo'. I have to get a cab.

In the courtyard I open the cage. It hesistates a second and darts out, up the stairs to the second floor and then back to the rooftop. I rebait the trap, put it back in the alcove.

Whoever was fighting on the roof last night might like some chicken.

The Dog

Lilly is in the States and the woman she’s left in charge, a Nica woman who lived in the States for a while, comes over to chat. You hear about that dog up at the Esso station?

I haven’t but she tells me. Apparently it belongs to a family that owns a little refreshment stand next door at the stop for the Managua bus. A few nights back some guy brought a pit bull, a fighting dog, over. For amusement he loosed the pit bull on the family’s dog. It tore it’s jaw open, busted it’s teeth out.

It’s horrible, she tells me. The poor thing.

While Toni is doing the neuter I tell her about it. We might be able to help, we have some antibiotics. It’s too late to stitch it, since it happened a few days ago and the wound needs to drain. But someone should go have a look.

We aren’t going to bring this dog in - it’s owned - we’ll just see if we can offer assistance.

The only thing that qualifies me for this errand is a deep and abiding love of fountain soda, hard to find in Nicaragua but available at the Esso station. The Esso station is an odd thing to begin with - it’s actually an On The Run convenience store, the exact same ones we have in Colorado and it looks exactly the same as one in the States, complete with air conditioning, soda fountain, American style fast food, everything. Weird.

I walk out later that day, about a mile walk. I get my soda and look around but I don’t see the dog. The Esso station is on the main road to Managua and Rivas and it’s Saturday so it’s packed. I walk around the neighborhood, don’t see any dogs at all. I’m about to walk back home when I notice someone tending to the perfect American looking lawn around the store. In my horrible Spanish I explain who I am and ask if he knows about the dog. He immediately knows what I’m talking about and hurries me over to the stand, a little wooden shack that sells some bottles of Central American soda, some snacks, but is primarily a place to lock bicycles up. Twenty yards from On The Run, a universe away.

More horrible Spanish, more explaining - I’m a veterinary nurse from a clinic here, we heard what happened here, we wanted to know if you needed help. We might have medicine or something. I need to take a picture of the dog to show it to my coworkers. Immediately the whole family mobs me. Pobrecito Lolo, the kids, say. Their poor dog. They thank me for coming.

Someone is sent for the dog. It’s a typical Nica dog of no determinate breed, medium sized and prick eared. I don’t see anything wrong with it until the man picks it up. And then it’s horrible.

There is no actual open wound left, but the jaw is broken and just hangs, leaving the dog’s mouth open permanently. Most of the teeth are gone. It happened a week ago, the man tells me. They took him to the vet and are got some antibiotics. He shows me the bottle and I write the name of the drug down.


An infection we could treat. This I don’t know. I have no idea. I take some pictures.

I ask if he can eat or drink. The man answers but I have trouble understanding. I don’t know that I was clear enough when I asked- my accent makes it hard for Nicas to understand me - and he’s talking quickly. Something about water and milk. While we’re talking the dog manages to pick up a bag of garbage. I get the feeling he can drink and pick things up but can’t chew or swallow food because of this jaw.

To the best of my ability I explain that I don’t know if we can do anything but either me or one of my co-workers will return in a day or two to talk to them. We don’t have a vet but we will have one in two weeks and maybe he can do something.

The vet they took Lolo to doesn’t do surgery and even if could do it, I doubt the family could afford it. The dog is eight years old, ancient for a Nica dog, and the family obviously cares about it. They are furious about what happened. We called the police, the owner tells me, they did nothing, nothing.

I go find Nick at the email café and show him the pictures. He’s stumped, too. He doesn’t know if Dr. Tom would even be able to do anything about it. But he’ll go talk to them, explain to them that if they can keep it alive until then they should bring it to us. He’ll also tell them that if they can’t they should bring it to us anyway to humanely euthanize. It’s not a cruel thing, it’s a poverty thing: if you can’t save something here most people will just slit it’s throat. Not a nice way to go. It’s not done to be mean it’s just the quickest way most Nicas know to kill something. We can at least do a humane euth if need be, a barbituate overdose.

You do what you can, even if it doesn’t seem like much.

To end on a happier note, Freda’s puppy continues to do well. It’s not quite walking yet but it wobbles around, dragging itself like a little black and white seal. We are all pretty cynical but we are all enchanted by the chubby little thing.