I know dogs. I have dogs. I GET dogs. I’m not selfish with dogs – if they want to eat, I feed them. Even if I don’t feel like it or I’m doing something else or have to make them an egg and rice mix because I’m out of dog food. I get cats, too. I have one. Lluvia is smart and sassy and never jumps on the table and lets me pet him for a few minutes before he bites me. I get it. I sort of get pigs….they’re easy to care for. Just keep them cool and fed and I have happy pigs. I don’t have to make special food – just give them whatever is going bad in the fridge, or some leftovers, pieces of stuff people don’t eat, even fruit off the ground and voila – they’re fed. I am not too fond of roosters – they’re loud and it is a farmyard lie that they only crow at sunrise. They crow all of the time – this glotteral, scratchy aargh-argh-a-ghhhhhhh that wakes me up and makes me want to make rooster soup. Chickens are OK, because baby chicks are yellow and chirpy and if I’m really fast I can pick one up and it doesn’t care. Horses…covered. I don’t know where they are 95% of the time, but when they’re around they eat mangoes out of my hand and run toward me when I call them. I get them. They get me. Parrots – don’t get me started. All the crap that comes out of his mouth came from me so we’re really one in the same.
I do not get pelibueys. They’re a mix between a goat and a sheep – a goat/sheep thing. They’re sweet, look a little like dogs, and can be very independent, like dogs. But they don’t need me. They eat anything and go anywhere. If I’m nice, they love me. They’ll follow me around, but not too close. They don’t understand English. They don’t understand Spanish. And if I wave my arms they run away (about 3 feet) and then come right back to finish whatever it was that they were doing before I waved. They’re smart and stupid and cute and ugly and not too great for anything. They destroy gardens, grass, trees, and whatever else is within mouth range because….they can eat it. They’ll eat cans, plastic, shoes, furniture, and seem to be especially partial to hammocks. But for whatever reason, I have an unspeakably deep need to be surrounded by animals – maybe it’s because I like them more than people most of the time. And I especially like little things - cute little puddles of fur and feathers with soft feet who don’t know that most people around here don’t care the least about them.
Being responsible for these little things is big. But also small, important and inconsequential. Because if I fuck up, they die and no one really cares. If I leave rat poison out and my cat eats it by accident, the cat dies…I get another one. If I forget to take care of a pelibuey and it gets wrapped around a tree and strangles itself…it dies. If a baby chick gets picked up by a chicken hawk…you get it. I can look at it as the “circle of life” – things live, things die. People live, people die. Animals live, and sometimes even cute little puddles of life that should live a whole helluva lot longer than a few weeks…..die.
Herein is the problem – I CARE. It breaks my heart. It makes me feel helpless and hopeless and unable to intervene and … well, SAVE them. I feel like I’m their Ambassador – their embassy of happiness and security and safety and the possibility of life better than what they would have had without me. Me, me, me. Starting to get the picture? I know I’m supposed to feel that good that at least I gave these little things a moment of care and compassion, but I’m starting to think this is really all about me. About caring and compassion in a land where death is shrugged away and then ignored and life “goes on.” That maybe I can set an example to someone that caring and compassion can cross over to everyone and anyone – even if they can’t talk or tell us what’s wrong or ask for a hug or some kind words over the telephone from an old friend.
So, I will cry. I will cry when I think about what a selfish person I am by surrounding myself with animals that I understand, and even with the ones that I don’t understand, and thinking that for one brief moment we were both happy at exactly the same time. Which is pretty good because they have me to mourn for them. I’m sure there’s a nice hammock out there just waiting for my little pelibuey MonaLisa to nibble on – and she’s just fine.
As for me, I’ll stay hopeful, and hopeless, and compassionate and clueless. And try again tomorrow to grow a tomato.
