Tuesday, October 18, 2011

A la cena / at dinner

Smiles all around as we pile well-cooked chunks of meat-with-bone, steeped in a perfectly seasoned just-right-hot red sauce, onto our plates. Then we reach for the fresh-steaming blue corn tortillas from the nearby bowl. Our dear friend--also named Sara--keeps them coming straight from the wood-fire. The kids --teenagers now!!-- are also seated around the long wooden table. This is a cozy, easy-going gathering that we have been enjoying for these many years.

Now, her husband Guillermo commences to describe the events of the previous evening. This man of all trades -- this ocean-fisherman, farmer, builder, tool-fixer, gardener, father, mayor of the pueblo, born and raised right here and married to a village girl -- is also a skilled... well, here is his story:

His corn crop is just coming on to fully ripe, so he heads out to the field across the river (never mind the crocodile threat) with his two dogs -- at just around 10pm every night, to begin his continual circling of the field until just around 4am. If he hears a snap, or suspicious rustle of a cornstalk, he sics the dogs to the spot...

Barking loudly, the dogs race around and end up chasing the raccoons (oh, there are so very many these days) up into a nearby tree and hold them there...

...which is when Guillermo hauls out his sling-shot (with an outsized band) from his pocket, picks up a few good-sized stones, and then makes use of a skill he perfected as a kid growing up right here, doing the same thing. No wasted shots. Each pebble brings down a raccoon, and in that instant, the dogs are on it.

Within moments, the raccoons are dead. Son muertos, las mapaches.

Wow, sez I... and in my fractured Spanish, I comment that the dogs must have devoured those mapaches on the spot....

"No....." he says slowly. And with a flashing grin, he glances down at the bowl of fresh-cooked meat, and over at my plate.

1 comment:

grh said...

Never tasted raccoon before....how did it taste?