Saturday, October 21, 2006
Goin' on a lion hunt
(sing along if you know the tune) Goin' on a lion hunt. Gonna catch a big one. I'm not scared! Look at all these flowers. It's a nice day!
Except it wasn't a lion - it was a puppy! Then a bull! Then a rat! No kidding, last night I hunted all three! I was just sitting here writing my mom an email and something catches my eye outside. It was a puppy, running haphazardly through the fields! What?? Once it reached the tall pineapple plants it looked confused. I was confused too - what do you do with a lost puppy in Haiti? So I called the Spaldings. In the meantime, the puppy ran off and was nowhere to be seen from my window. Had I imagined it?
I go outside to look for it. I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do with it if I caught it - maybe give it some food? Once reaching the field, the puppy remains nowhere to be seen. So I look some more. Nothing. A puppy couldn't just disappear, could it? Or had I hallucinated the puppy and it was actually a rat? I decide not to give up and continue searching the fields some more when all of a sudden, what do I see but THE PUPPY! After applauding the fact that I'm not going crazy I call to the puppy, which seems to be some kind of beagle mix. What does it do? It turns and runs as far and as fast away from me as it's little puppy legs could muster. Of course, this is not the normal reaction of puppies in the states so I just kind of stood there dumbfounded. Sadly, most dogs in Haiti are unwanted, uncared for and abused. Most of them don't have owners, don't get shots, and are mangy mutts.
Anyway, I decide to hunt after it as I needed an adventure. I eventually caught up to it but then it ran away again - boy that puppy could run fast! It looked healthy for the most part although it had a distended stomach. I chased it past a field of tall, thin crops (not sure what they were) which happened to include a grazing cow. The puppy ended up running through a field where it would be impossible for me to locate it so I decided to leave its life in God's hands and move on.
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La la la, I'm walking back and decide to take a photo of the peaceful grazing cow. "I wonder how close to it I can get?", I muse. There are livestock tied up randomly all over the place here and they seem pretty content doing their own thing. I snap my first (and only) photo at about 30 yards when I stop and ask myself, "Are those horns?" Yes, indeed it was a bull and it was now looking directly at me! It's gaze was fixed so I didn't move. After about 15 long seconds it started chewing again. I moved to slowly walk away when it fixed it gaze back on me. To be sure that I saw it, it made one of those "humphf" noises out of its nose. You know, the kind they make before they get traction with their foot and charge something. Oh nuts. How do I get out of this situation alive? Andrew told me just yesterday that Marty was chased by a bull on one of his trips down here. Is this one of those animals you should show that you see it and wait for it to turn around, is it safe to run or will I be chased, or should I put my head down and slowly back away? I chose the put-my-head-down-and-slowly-walk-in-another-direction method. It worked but I gotta tell you that I was more than a little worried about my well-being.
I decide to tell the Spaldings about the bull eating their crops so Andrew and I go inform the guards. The guard that went eventually returned in one piece so at least we know the bull didn't get him. In the meantime, I tell Andrew where I had seen some rats hiding when I was puppy hunting. (Literally "ratting-out"!) We had a good time coaxing the rats out of their lair and Tasha (the Spalding's dog) nearly caught a couple! We ended up chasing one into my building which is not quite outstanding in my book but c'est la vie! What an adventure!
# posted by A*Dub @ 8:36 AM 
