WHAT WOULD THE MENTALIST DO?  (WWTMD?)

In the previous post, I left a cliffhanger....  WILL the puppies get beheaded?
The answer is no!

It's a great story -- email me if you want to read it.  I had to assume the mindset of the Mentalist during the thick of things!  Now, all is well.

Short version:  They were all adopted by thoughtful, loving people.  Better yet, they were adopted in pairs -- even better yet, the pairs were the way the puppies had sorted themselves out.

SO!  Coyote and Manuela are sharing a home together just across the dirt road from our place,  and Guantes and Pirata are together as well, in another village not so very far away.

What I share here are a couple of photos (out of many)....

Here is starving, frightened, homeless Guantes -- we could NOT resist those eyes. We began to feed and water him from the first moment he stumbled weakly into our jungly back yard.  When he regained some strength, he went off and brought his sister (Manuela), and naturally, shortly after that, Pirata and Coyote showed up.  All four were mere skin and bones, like this...

But give 'em a couple months of good food, good water, and good lovin' and you get this, with Guantes (on the right) leading the pack:

The families who adopted them needed dogs to work with them in their fields -- to head off thieves like raccoons, for instance.  But also.... they welcomed the dogs as "amigos" they said.  They smiled as they said that, while watching their dogs cavort about with each other.

All's well that ends well, and this is a good place to end this story.  I'm kickin' back and.... watching the beautiful clouds in the beautiful blue sky.  That's what the Mentalist would do, too.

DROWN THEM;  FIND THEM HOMES;  ADOPT THEM;  BEHEAD THEM

That about sums up the progression, and the mix of opinions, on what to do about a litter of cute puppies.  They were abandoned in the riverbed  near our village by some passing city-dweller.  A common practice this, for such folks to drive to some remote village like ours here in coastal Mexico, push the puppies or kittens out the door, and drive away.  Problem solved..... for them.

For us, it was just the beginning.

I am writing,  again, about our life in a little village along the great coast of Mexico -- the only gringos in this sweet, peaceful place.

We were lounging in hammocks in the shade of our home-built ramada one afternoon -- after a day in the surf.   Just one little puppy, all bones and weak and exhausted, wandered into our backyard where we were.... He could barely walk, stumbling, falling, and lying down to rest... Neither of us could stand it, of course.  I got a plastic container and filled it with water, while Robert unearthed a bag of dogfood bought from a previous year's concern.  The puppy sated himself, and collapsed awhile, then came over to lick my hand and....   then took off and returned with his sister!  We fed her, too.  Then, surprise, the other two brothers joined them.  Four adorable sweethearts.

Not surprisingly, they stuck around -- and took up sleeping against the back wall of our casita...  Very sensitive, gentle, and intelligent creatures,  quickly responsive to our slightest  messages.  A simple "Sssssssttt!" is all they need for warning.  For instance, they know that they are not allowed to come up the stairs onto our porch, nor into the casita.  And of course, they are so playful now -- big puppy piles and chases all around our land, then coming to us for petting, and to give us passionate licks before racing off again.

And so began the progression of solutions.  Our first solution:  we tried to donate them to the no-kill animal-rescue place in Zihuatanejo but the place is full, and also, any animal donations must already be neutered.

Next, the thought of putting them in a bag and tossing them into the ocean was offered (NOT supported by me -- though I do know that this is how my Uncle Herb dealt with the many litters of kittens on his Minnesota farm).

Then... in fact, we are still in this stage...  there is the hope of having them adopted out.  Some success there.  Coyote and Manuela have been accepted by our neighbors just across the dirt road from us (oh, yes, we named them all, which -- of course -- only strengthens our attachment...mine anyway....alas)!!  So!  Twice a day these two now go over there, and these neighbors feed them.  The puppies know just what time of day that is.  Their new owners  do not --however-- pet them and play with them.  Thus, the puppies still spend their days at our place playing with their littermates....  and sleeping in a puppy-pile there by the side of our house.  Hopefully, when we return Stateside, they will bond more with their humans.

No such luck, however, with sweet Pirata (for mascara´d eyes like Johnny Depp in "Pirates of the Caribbean"), and gentle Guantes (meaning gloves, for the white four feet;  pronounced  HWAN-tays).

Robert gently, firmly, nixes the idea of adoption --  which would entail carting them back and forth between US & Mexico just for starters.  However, the wife of our closest dearest friends offered a compromise to that!  She says that she will come by everyday for the four months we are gone, and feed them.... (but as a fellow human being, I can imagine that this could become quite an unrewarding burden over time).   Yet clearly, she and I share the attachment and tenderness for them...

And then there is the Final Solution, echoing the first one mentioned above.  It came up again, as we shared breakfast on our porch...   Both her practical husband, and my practical husband, offered a more concrete solution.  Each of them have made a vicious, fast, hacking gesture while indicating a puppy's neck.

Corky Carrol and The Green Flash

With a title like that for this silly essay, one might well conjure up images of a svelte surfer careening down the face of a huge wave, keeping just ahead of the crash -- then catching his place right at the mouth of the Green Room...  Make that a huge tube with a thunderous crash following along just behind the surfer....  Can you see him do a couple of cool swoops, maybe let himself slide back into the tube, out of sight for a moment, and then explode back out again?  Flashing in and out of the Green Room.... yeah, call him the Green Flash.

But no.  Oh, I have seen that kind of action, but this silly essay is not about that.

It's not even about the Green Flash, per se.... though I now have actually (and recently) SEEN this phenomenon.  Yes.  It was a clear, clean horizon, no clouds and no fog hovering above the vast expanse of ocean.  The beautiful bright orange sun sank slowly below the horizon of the sea and just at that moment of setting --there it was, a small green flash of light, right where the sun had been.  It seemed to last, for it burned into my eyes and I could see it superimposed upon whatever I gazed at afterwards -- a bright green it was, like new grass.  I have been walking out to the beach at sunset for many years now, hoping each night to see what I now have seen.  I will, of course, continue to watch the sunsets, but I digress.

This silly essay should probably be deleted, but I have time on my hands on this particular trip to town, an hour's drive from our humble digs in a small Mexican village.

Perhaps you could say it's about what a delightful gentleman Corky Carrol is.

( As an aside, may I compliment him on his performance last night at a favorite seaside resort restaurant here in Mexico.  He played lead singer and lead guitar, backed up by his band (an iMac computer).... and thoroughly delighted the packed house of friends and admirers with his repertoire of favorite songs from over the years.  But this silly essay is not about that, either. )

Lifelong surfer, man of fame for his surfing skills, Corky has a home on the beach where .... well, where I personally go boogie-boarding.  This essay is NOT about surfing.  It is about boogie-boarding, sorta.

At the end of a great, long, bouncing fast boogie-ride on a whoop-and-holler wave, there I was, just starting to pull myself back to an  upright stance in the waist-deep water, when Corky came gliding in, directly in front of me.

I stood up quickly then, with a grin -- completely unaware for just a moment, that the top of my swimsuit was below where it should be.  My womanhood was in full view.  Corky was cool.  While I quickly rearranged things, he showed no reaction to that at all...  Instead, he commented on how great the surf was today, talking to me as a comrade among wave-riders.

Ah... and when I shrugged and said, that I was just a boogie-boarder, he QUICKLY replied, quite sweetly (with no insinuations at all....trust me) -- and with a big smile -- "Hey!  You're a girl who likes to boogie!"

As an addendum to all this...  Corky's lovely wife, who is NOT a surfer, has expressed an interest in coming out to boogie with me.

Los Rayos Que Pican

(Did I get the grammar down correctly on that title?  "The Rays that Sting")

So -- my conclusion is this:  it's about surrendering to reality, and having booties MADE of straps and then WEARING them -- in order to be protected from the outrageously painful strike of the stingrays in the sea.

We each have been struck.  Robert first, then Annie, then me... and Robert has now been hit twice.  All strikes happened out there in our boogie-wave territory.  Surfers float above it all.

For both of Annie and Robert, that first strike was an excruciatingly painful ordeal, lasting some four hours. We hover over the afflicted asking what we can do to help, telling stories, massaging shoulders, whatever -- to just help them through... 

For me when I got hit, well, I lucked out.  When I set my foot down after a great ride, a ray struck me... I could feel it hit repeatedly and then wiggle to drill the poison in deep...  but the stinger had hit me directly on a STRAP of my sandals, and so it was all to no effect.  

So, anyway... this most recent strike (poor Robert) brought with it another helpful tip (Robert's invention). 

Just a few days ago,  being a good sport (and the surf waves sucked, so why not), Robert came and joined us surf-widows out there in the shore break waves.  Boogie-boarding, by the way, is the equivalent of sledding down hills.  Getting out to where the waves break (forcing your way through the forces of already crashed waves) is the equivalent of climbing back up the hill.  Catching the wave and riding it to shore is about as thrilling as sledding back down... The size of the wave -- like the steepness of the hill -- determines the hoot'n'holler factor.  (Annie and I are the only surf-widows who go out there and do this childish play -- I guess the others are just too sophisticated for "sledding."  Their loss, sez here.)

The shore waves were big and strong on this day, and so we were all hootin' and hollerin' and bouncing along to shore -- a great day for boogiers -- when Robert put his foot down and then called out.

We know the drill well.

Help the afflicted one limp to shore.  Race over to the nearby sand-dunes where the herbal remedy grows wild.  Gather bunches of it, while any other helper available alerts the little surfside restaurant folks to boil up some water.  In all past instances, the leaves are broken up and put into the very hot water and the afflicted one then painfully lowers the part of his foot that has the hole in it downdown into that very hot water.  One wonder which hurts worse!  Boiling hot water or strike? 

FOUR HOURS of that before the pain subsides enough to move on...

But now, there is IMPROVEMENT!  Robert came up with this one and it worked.  Following his request, the first batch of leaves that I gathered for him were "blendered" to a pulp and then packed and held directly onto the sting area.  Following that,  we submersed his foot into the mash as well.  The pain subsided noticeably (which is NOT to say that it quit hurting like hell -- but it did indeed subside to perhaps like, uh, purgatory maybe).

Robert still believes that hot infused water is also good, so he followed up the mash-soaking with gingerly dipping his foot into the hot water and herb infused bath , too.

The wonderful result (and I thank the mash) is that in a mere TWO hours, the pain had subsided and we moved on!

So..... about booties made of straps.  We have learned that sandal straps block the ray-sting, so then why not make booties that are all-strap?  Well, why not!!  So Annie did just that.  Had a pair made for me as well.  She wears hers... They look kinda like the boots that a knight-in-shining-armor might wear.... and kinda clunky.   The ones she had made for me need a little tweaking before they are wearable (they don't bend at the ankle but that can be tweaked if I would just take them back to the guy).  What is stopping me?  Danged if I know!

GOOD FENCES MAKE GOOD NEIGHBORS

Well, so says Robert Frost.  Here in Mexico, apparently, that old maxim is flexible.

When we first moved into our humble village digs, we put up a fence around the entire perimeter of our property -- most especially to keep out the wandering pigs, cows and horses.  We had planted many new baby trees, and flowering bushes -- and we also didn't want their, um, contributions to our soil -- so easy to step in.  We gently and repeatedly instructed our little next'door neighbor kids to NOT clamber over our fence, but instead, to come in by the gate -- just like ALL the other kids in the village do.

However, the parents decided, while we were Stateside this past summer, that such a good fence was a barrier which prevented them from gathering the widespread eggs from their many free-range chickens--all laid on OUR property.  (Mind you, the chickens just fly over the fence, and wander our woodsy little-crawling-bug-filled-property for their meals.) So -- rather than walk down to the road and enter our property through our gate, they simply cut a square hole in the fence, right next to their house.  THAT hole is for their kids to get through.  As adults, mom and dad clearly roll over the top of the fence at another section between poles. 

Our first day back, I went over to the fence to greet the laughing jumping kids (mom was in the background watching)-- and I saw that hole.  The kids were trying to crawl through to greet me, but I reminded them to use the gate -- like all the other kids in the village do -- and off they ran.  I looked at the mother, with a look of surprised incredulity, and she looked away impassively as though she had other things to do.

So I amend Robert Frost in this case.  Deep patience and inner calm make good neighbors.

The Power of the Sun

This is our front yard.

What's Next?

There's a joke that shows up occasionally on Facebook in which a self-important college freshman accosts a senior citizen, saying that it's impossible for the older generation to understand his generation.   

"You grew up in a different world, actually an almost primitive one!" he shouts.  "My generation grew up with television, jet planes, space travel, man walking on the moon.  We have nuclear energy, ships and cell phones, computers with light speed -- and so much more..."

To which the senior citizen replies:  "You're right son.  We didn't have those things when we were young...."   and the joke goes on from there, but I'll add my own two cents first.

-------   1951   --------

ME (all of 5 years old):  "Dad?  What are they going to invent when I grow up that we can't imagine now?"

DAD (all of 40 -- and quite surprised):  "Ha!  That's an amazing question for you to ask me.  Usually, kids your age expect the world to always stay the same.  Why... what...  why are you asking?"

ME (with a shrug):  Well....  they said (referring to a commentator on TV) that when you were a kid, you never imagined TV and now we have one, so I wanna know what will be when I grow up that I can't imagine now..."

DAD (pensively, and after a pause):  Voluntary poverty.  (NOTE:  if he explained that, I do not recall, but those two words stuck fast in my memory......)

-------   1971   -------- 

ME (all of 24, and very much a back-to-the-land communal hippie at Wheeler's Ranch in Sonoma County, California -- dad had come out there to visit me):  Hey dad -- do you remember when I asked what they'd invent when I grew up, that we couldn't imagine then....and you predicted "voluntary poverty."  Well!  Here I am!  Do you remember?

DAD (all of 60, laughing warmly):  Yes, but I didn't mean YOU!!

He stayed for several days, wandering The Land with me, meeting my friends, and their funky homes.   When he left, he hugged me warmly, and gave his approval...  commenting that we were living in a good way, peaceful, and healthy.  He actually added that it reminded him of his early childhood -- and reminded me to be careful of my long skirt around the wood cookstove -- the same lesson his sisters had to learn, he added.

------ Back to that joke -----

After a brief silence, the senior citizen responded as follows:

"You're right, son.  We didn't have those things when we were young, so we invented them.  Now, you arrogant little ****, what are you doing for the next generation?"