The Girls Next Door

Not one of the girls next door, this cow is free to roam up and down the lane, eating her fill of fresh grass.

Our only neighbors within a stone’s throw away are the cows on the lot next to us. The first night we spent in the house they mooed all night long. It seemed like some kind of bizarre cow welcoming party. Since then, we have either become used to their mournful calls, or they have become used to us and decided to give us some peace at night.

I have not exactly befriended the girls. When they see me coming, they either turn and amble away, or simply turn and stand there with their backsides towards me. Nevertheless, I feel something like affection towards them. That is why I was so distraught several days ago.

We are in a terrible drought. For nearly two months, not a drop has fallen from the sky. Our grass is now the color of straw and it crunches under foot when we walk through the yard. On the day I mentioned, I was particularly frustrated because the cows were oblivious to my attempts to be kind to them by providing clean fresh water. It was a hellishly hot day, not a cloud in the sky, and the brutal sun was scorching everything. The cows’ pond is quite low, though there is still enough muddy water to sustain them.

I thought the poor boney creatures would appreciate a large bin full of fresh water. However, my attempts to lead them to it were futile. I also tried spraying them with the hose, but a strong headwind simply blew the spray back in my direction. I got close enough to notice that one poor creature had walked through some loose fence wire and was trailing a large tangle of it behind her, part of it wrapped around her front legs as well. I grabbed from our tool box what I thought were a pair of wire cutters, and while deciding the best way to free the cow, tested them out and found them to be useless against the strong fence wire. In the end, I gave up for the day. Fortunately, the next day, someone else (the owner possibly? a vet?) came to visit the cows and removed the wire. I really wanted to talk to this person to find out who they were and why they were neglecting their animals, but my Spanish is still very poor. Rather than get into a pantomime confrontation, I kept my distance, rationalizing my timidity by telling myself a confrontation wouldn’t help anyway.

This photo may appear over-exposed, but it is not; that is actually the color of the grass now.

It is beyond me how people can be capable of such callousness to the suffering of animals. These are domestic animals; they are there because someone bought them and put them there. That means that person has a commitment to those animals and is responsible for their welfare. Leaving them on a plot of land barely able to provide enough vegetation and water is inexcusable. It is obvious the owners do not care about these animals. The dead cow is a prime example.

Just a couple of weeks after our arrival and before the drought had really set in, one of the cows died. Close to the fence, we noticed her lying on her side. Sleeping? No. That became the first of our two odd police reports concerning bovines. Unable to find the owner or anyone who knew the owner, we went to the rural police station to find out whether they knew the owner of the cows. No luck. It seems that when a cow is dead, and needs to be removed, the owners do not want to be located. So the carcass remained there and remains to this day. The prevailing winds come from the east of us, so we are upwind of the cow and only smelled it on the few times the winds came from the other direction. And it was foul. I think the carcass is so desiccated now that it does not have much odor anymore. Even the carrion eaters do not visit it now.

Hopefully there will not be future casualties. There are two young among the cows and they look so new and fresh and clean. I can only hope they will be better off than their parents. But I know that they too will experience the vicissitudes of climate during their lives.

Veterinary Visit

This morning I put on my goin'-to-the-vet clothes and did not bother to take a shower. We were taking the dogs to the vet for a routine check up and I knew that by the time we returned home I would be wearing puppy puke. I called it right. All three dogs barfed in the car.

Around town, there are many veterinarians. They are inexpensive and even make house calls. Today's office visit, which included vaccinations and anti-parasite pills, cost 200 pesos per dog. So, in total, we spent about $25. In Virginia, Pender veterinary would cost us $80 just to walk through the door.

Tip, doing her best "Flying Nun" impression. This photo was taken several weeks ago.

Fire

This is how things looked when we arrived:

But after nearly two months of drought, we now have this:



Okay, so that was an extreme comparison - photo hyperbole to make a point of just how dry it is here now. As if the lack of rain was not bad enough, conditions are just right for brush fires. By the way, the cow died of unknown causes other than drought, more on that in a later post.

Our personal experience with fire started out on a somewhat light note. As I wrote in my New Year's post, we started out the year playing firefighter in front of Gloria's house. That particular fire burned an area roughly 20 by 30 feet and we were able to get it under control before the real firefighters arrived.

Photo courtesy of Gloria.

That fire was nothing compared to the one now raging just down the street from her house. Fortunately it is a safe distance away. Others are not so fortunate though. Large swaths of hillside are engulfed in flames as I type this. The smoke is illuminated by the fires and looks like billowing red clouds against the night sky. It is rather scary, especially considering there are homes nearby. We do not know how it started. Firefighters have been working all day to try to contain it.

There have been fires in nearby departments as well. In Canelones, the department just to the east of Montevideo, a huge fire started last Thursday near the town of Villa Argentina. According to an article in El Pais on January 2, 2009, translated courtesy of UruguayDailyNews.com, 100 hectares burned there. Poor visibility due to smoke caused lengthy back-ups on the coastal highway and flames were as close as 20 meters to some houses.

As I type, the wind has picked up. I can hear it blowing outside. This is bad for the firefighters. I wish in vain that rain would accompany the wind, but the sky was perfectly clear today, not a cloud in sight.

A Falcon's First Flight

In my “Critters” post on November 30, 2008, I wrote about the falcons snatching barn swallows as they dove into their hideout in the eaves of the house. At least that is what I thought they were doing. Shortly after that posting, we noticed that the falcons were actually entering the eaves of the house. I thought they were going in there for an all they could eat barn swallow buffet, but that was before we noticed they were already carrying food, usually snakes they had caught. Then we started to hear the chirping. It was a new sound. We would hear the scraping of talons and crashing of wings as the falcon entered, then the chirping would begin. It sounded like babies begging for food. And indeed it was. Over the following weeks, the chirping at feeding times got louder and louder as the babies grew. Finally, on New Year’s Eve day, I was summoned to the back yard by Cesar. He always calls me whenever he finds some odd animal – or something too gross to pick up (that’s my job). He had noticed a bird on the ground that would not move as he approached. Perhaps there was something wrong with it. I immediately recognized it as the baby of the falcons. There was nothing wrong with it; it was just on its first voyage out of the nest and hadn’t quite gotten its wings yet. In the next couple of days we noticed another baby. We think there are only two, because we have only seen two falcon babies at a time, but the American Kestrel can have up to seven eggs in a clutch.

Baby falcon close-up

The American Kestrel has an incredible range, from Alaska all the way to Tierra del Fuego in Argentina. It is also known as the sparrow hawk, because of its small size. Its scientific name, Falco sparverius, means "falcon of the sparrows." However, it is a member of the falcon family and is closely related to the Peregrine Falcon. The color on these birds is fantastic. With rufous back and tail, white speckled belly, dramatic black face markings and slate blue on its wings, it is the most colorful of the birds of prey. The American Kestrel nests in cavities not of their own making, like our house, and may return to the same nesting locations year after year.

The young falcons’ flying is improving each day. Their landings are still a little rough, but we can see improvement. I suspect their parents were living here before we came along. We enjoy sharing the house with them and hope they like it enough to stick around and maybe have next year’s young here.

Baby falcon in pine tree

On the Frontera

On a whim, we drove to Brazil today. We cannot officially visit Brazil until we get visas, but we got a very small taste of the Portuguese speaking nation to our north by visiting the border town of Chuy. We knew we were getting close when we saw the mandatory Aduana (Customs) stops we would have to come through on the way back, but did not realize we were in Brazil until we noticed the road signs were in Portuguese. Being border ignoring scofflaws was not our intent, so we quickly turned around headed into town.

Chuy (Chui in Brazil) has a reputation as being a rough place. Other than the dude I saw walking down the street with tattoos covering his face (sorry, I may be brave enough to chase a bull, but was not brave/stupid enough to ask this dude for his photo), we did not see the rough side of it. Let’s just leave it as saying it is cool to see once, but I wouldn’t want to live there.

Most people go there for the duty free shopping. The main road through the center of town – one side Uruguay, the other, Brazil – is lined with duty free shops on the Uruguayan side. Prices seem pretty good – a 750ml bottle of Chivas was $25, and we saw Johnny Walker Blue Label for $150. We passed on the Scotch and purchased a bottle of Penfolds 2006 Koonunga Hill Shiraz, mainly because seeing an Australian wine here is such a novelty. We also bought some Frey Swiss chocolate, a hand-made hammock, and a dress for me. Eating lunch at a parilla we noticed that most of the patrons were speaking Portuguese. We were both hoping for some good Brazilian style black beans and rice (probably impossible to find on a menu in “Euro” Uruguay), but settled for a tortilla Espanola and chicken brochettes. The surprise of the day was running into an expat couple from Canada who we knew through http://www.uruguayliving.com/. I had met Gundy only once and knew her husband Syd only by his photograph, but recognized them walking down the street. What a small world it is. Then we slipped across the border again to take this photo of the Brazilian side:

Uruguayans are limited in the value of goods they are allowed to bring back from Chuy. However, with an American passport, Aduana does not even ask what we purchased. All I had to say to the Aduana official was “somos Americanos” and he waved us by with a friendly “muy bien” and a thumbs-up sign. Ah, I love my U.S. passport!

Bueller, Bueller....?

I know you're out there. You have been reading the blog, lurking. Come on people, give me some comments! Please? For the technologically challenged, you can submit comments by simply clicking "COMMENTS" at the bottom of each post.

I am happy to say I can now post photos. Thanks to a free download of Microsoft PowerToys, I can resize .jpg files so they can be easily uploaded. Some older posts have been updated with pictures.

¡Feliz 2009!

Today is only the first day of 2009, but it has been such a full day that I feel like it has been at least two days so far. First, we had a fantastic time with friends last night. As I have mentioned before in this blog, new friends here have welcomed us like family. Their warm and sincere hospitality gives me a sense of comfort in this far from home place. I am grateful for it.

After spending hours around the table enjoying good food, wine and conversation, we ushered in the New Year in the Uruguayan way – with besos all around and fireworks, naturally. Fireworks here are called “fuegos artificiales”, literally artificial fire. But soon we had real fire to deal with. All it took was one ember, and a large patch of dry vegetation by the front of the house was ablaze. The bomberos were called but we did not wait idly for them to come. With Cesar manning the hose, Neli with a bucket, and Marisa and I beating down flames with soaking green branches torn from Chilca bushes, we kept it contained. Dirty from smoke and soot, we called it a night around 1:30am. Nothing kills a party like a brush fire.

We did not get much sleep though, because we were determined to welcome the first rays of sun of 2009 on Playa Brava, in Punta del Este. Being married to the human alarm clock is really handy when one has to get up at 5:30am after three hours of sleep. On our way to the beach, we passed huge crowds of revelers just leaving the clubs after partying the night away. Sleepy-eyed, we rendezvoused at the beach with Gloria and friends and took in the warmth and energy of the rising sun. I had the fleeting but powerful feeling of rejuvenation; like this was not just another sunrise, but the start of something new.
Back at the chacra, we made a big American style breakfast complete with home-made biscuits, before trying to catch up on sleep. Before we knew it, it was mid-day and time to go back to Gloria’s house. None of us got enough of last night, so we gathered around the outside table one more time for a lunch of turkey, roast pork, arugula salad, caprese, stuffing, green beans almandine and of course, wine. Satiated, we wiled away the rest of the afternoon, either playing cards, napping, exploring the garden, or just relaxing.

From chasing a bull to putting out a fire, to soaking in the first rays of sun, it has been a pretty exciting couple of days. Here is to 2009 – may it be filled with peace and happiness for all.