Que Lindo!
Trip Start
Aug 08, 2008
1
26
42
Trip End
Oct 12, 2008
Puriscal,
Costa Rica
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
The kids loved my sloth pictures and videos. Some of them asked if the park was in the U.S.; apparently it's something of a novelty even for them. I of course enjoyed the attention and the opportunity to talk about my new pet cause
Anna and her puppy
. I showed them the picture of Toyota, who's missing an arm, and explained as best I could about the wounds many of these creatures sustain as a result of grabbing power lines, getting hit by cars while crossing roads that cut through their habitat, and getting beaten up by children who think it's fun to pick on a creature too slow to run away. I had to use a lot of hand gestures, but I think they understood; they certainly seemed horrified by the prospect of these adorable baby sloths getting hurt. Is it too much to hope that I've made a difference?In other cute animal news, Anna has adopted a stray dog.
She brought dog biscuits on the trip and has been making friends with the local mutts everywhere she goes. But there's one little golden-brown pooch, vaguely resembling a large Chihuahua, that has taken a particular liking to her. She even let Anna pull some kind of moth larva out of an abscess on her back. Anna's trying to persuade Marta to take the puppy home after she leaves; if that doesn't work, she says she'll take the puppy home herself. Today, she took her to the local veterinarian, and I offered to come along as her translator.
The place looked more like a pet store than a vet's office, but the guy who looked at the dog seemed to know what he was doing. I explained the problem as best I could ("Dog is sick. Has skin problem. Not fleas. Some kind of bug. Don't know what.") He looked her over, and gave us a pack of four pills, to be taken every eight days, and a bottle of shampoo. All together, it cost us about $5 U.S.D., so even if this does nothing it won't be such a great loss.
It all begins with the leaves
That said, I've grown rather attached to the mutt myself, and now I have a stake in her well-being, too. If she keeps licking me and looking at me with those soft black eyes, I might even get roped into helping bathe her. Puriscal has quite a few stray dogs, though not quite as many as I saw in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. It's not always easy to tell which dogs are strays, because pets are seldom collared or leashed, and many aren't even neutered. There is a much more casual attitude toward feeding and petting strange dogs, allowing pets to roam free, and bringing them to bars and restaurants. I know of no animal control service. Therefore, I imagine, the line between "pet" and "stray" may be less distinct than it is in the States.
We had two field trips today: one to a cigar factory, and the other to the home of a woman with an old-fashioned oven, where we were to learn how to make traditional Costa Rican pastries.
I enjoyed the tour of Tabaco Station more than I'd expected I would. It was interesting to watch the process of hand-rolling cigars and learn a little about the different leaf varieties. We each got a complimentary souvenir cigar about the size of a cigarette, and took a dorky picture of ourselves outside "smoking" them.
Dona Elsa was something else altogether; she makes me wish I had a Costa Rican grandmother like her. She welcomed us into her home, where she has an old-school wood-burning stove that immediately ignited (sorry!) Tricia's inner pyromaniac tendencies
That's how he rolls ;)
. We learned how to make bizcochos, little crescent-shaped cheese pastries. I was the first to volunteer to knead the dough, a mixture of cornmeal, salt, sugar, very stinky grated cheese, and sour milk. Or, as Xinia put it, "real milk. From a real cow. That moos." I guess she meant, as opposed to the sweetened condensed milk sold unrefrigerated in aseptic cartons that's usually used in cooking down here. This stuff was from a local cow, and was being stored (also unrefrigerated, hence "sour") in a 5-gallon drum that might once have contained motor oil, from the look of it. I've always wondered what those curds and whey Miss Muffet was supposed to be munching on would look like. Now I know.
We then formed the dough into little tortillas on plastic sandwich bags, put a spoonful of milk-cheese mix in the middle, and folded them in half. Then we transferred them to banana leaves for baking, and Trish giddily slid them into the oven.
Ours burned, naturally. Dona Elsa was of course prepared with a backup batch, which she presented to us as our own, but we saw the misshapen lumps of carbon and knew better. Most of the others didn't like the bizcochos; Brian said they tasted like Kraft Mac & Cheese, and I had to concur there was a vague resemblance, but I devoured them
Sealing the ends with sap
. We did better with the coffee making, which involved pouring boiling water (we didn't have to boil it ourselves, thank goodness) through a sock full of ground beans suspended above the empty carafe. She also made us agua dulce, a typical Costa Rican drink that's essentially brown sugar dissolved in hot water. I didn't care for it, but I've had worse.Anna's dog was waiting for us when we got back. I told her, "now that you're feeding her, buying medicine for her, and thinking about taking her home, you have to give her a name." We've been batting a few ideas around, but so far nothing has struck either of us as especially brilliant. In the meantime, she (the dog, not Anna) is pretty good about answering to kissing noises.
Comments
Dog name suggestions
Since it answers to kissing sounds, how 'bout Smoochy?
Then of course, there's always Fluffy!:)