ELDERTIMES
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A Stupid Thing to Do
By Cindy Young
June 2, 2010
In 1973, I was 24 years old. My new husband of three years and I were embarking on our first adventure of living in another country; Mexico. That is, if you don’t count the strange experience of living in New York City before that. Coming from Oklahoma, NY was as strange and exotic a place as any overseas assignment.
But I digress; back to Mexico. We quickly made friends with many other young expats in the banking and business community in Mexico City. There was one couple with whom we became fast friends. She was British and he was half Mexican and half American. They both lived in Mexico City all their lives with their families. They were young and newly wed like us. They invited us to their family compound on several occasions at Valle de Bravo.
Valle de Bravo is a colonial Mexican village nestled in the mountains of Michoacán. The primary attraction is a sweet alpine lake where our friends played with their ski boat and sailboat. Private houses behind concrete walls in a maze of narrow cobblestone alleyways dotted the hillsides. Brilliant purple bougainvillea flourished. Farmers plowed the lush, green fields with double yoked oxen. The scent of wood smoke and grilled tortillas filled the air as the Mexicans cooked on their wood burning stoves. Every morning the roosters crowed and the street people with their carts hollered, “Lena!” “Lena!” “Se vende lena!” (Wood for sale!) like the peanuts vendor at the baseball game.
The mornings were cool and fresh after the usual blackening of skies and incredible lightning shows and torrents of rain in the early afternoons and evenings. There was a fireplace in every room and heavy woolen Mexican blankets on the beds to snuggle together underneath. Our days went typically something like this: Wake up with the roosters, jump out of the covers to stoke up the fire, snuggle back in for an hour or so, have a leisurely breakfast and coffee among the bougainvillea on the patio overlooking the glossy and mist covered lake, take a spin on the skis while the lake was still placid, have a little sail when the breeze kicked up, or go horseback riding in the hills, work up a big appetite for a midday feast, watch the storms rumbling in the distance, retire to the bedrooms for a siesta with the fire blazing and the storm raging, have a light supper and lots of alcohol and laughter in the evenings. We would go foraging for wild mushrooms in the damp, rich, earth scented woods. Our friend, Carlos, would stir fry them up in his giant wok over the wood stove, creating more delicious aromas. It was all so romantic and idyllic.
One afternoon we sojourned over to the Country Club bar and restaurant for a drink on the verandah, watching the inevitable approaching thunderstorm. As we were leaving, a campasino (a local peon) approached us. He was carrying a tattered box. Inside the box was a baby coyote. It was about four to five weeks old. The weathered old man gave us a yarn that the pup was abandoned and for $20 US dollars we could assure his survival by taking him in. Well, I am a sucker for cute little helpless animals. I somehow convinced my wonderful husband that we could take him home and made him cough up the money. We had a young female dog that we had gotten as a puppy from the Humane Society in Mexico City and since we were both working, I convinced him that our dog needed a companion. Our friends were laughing. They were probably “borrachos” with margaritas and this little trade provided them with hilarious entertainment.
When we got home, we made a place for the little bugger to sleep on our covered tiled entranceway to our house. We fed him warm milk and oatmeal until I figured out what he needed to eat. It was a lot more than oatmeal. He had sharp, sharp baby teeth and he was a little rascal. We soon discovered that coyotes are nocturnal. He shattered our giant pots and our plants were shredded and strewn in every direction. Dirt and debris covered the floor and walls. He had scratched up the tiles trying to dig out. The pup had gone berserk! We kept him in our backyard, chained to a large tree while out to work. Our other dog loved playing with him and we were doing our best to bond with him.
We knew we had a challenge. He was wild and we realized it was not easy to tame a wild critter. Did we really think we could keep a full grown coyote as a pet? In the second week of his captivity with us, he vanished. He was strong enough to break the chain from the tree and still small enough to escape through the bars of the driveway gate. I felt so guilty. I envisioned him strangling himself as his little collar grew tighter and tighter around his neck, provided he did not starve to death or get hit by a car. I’m afraid that little guy did not have much of a chance, a victim of human greed. Would he have survived in his habitat in the hills of Michoacán? Chances are he would have fallen victim to a predator, or been sold to another naive gringo, or grilled up on one of those wood stoves, but I would have had a better conscience knowing not to interfere with nature.
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When The Cat Got My Tongue
by Diane Morgan
June 2, 2010
I have no idea as to the origin of that saying. What I can say with certainty is it happened to me.
Back in the 1960s and early 70s our family had a dog and two cats. Mikki, the dog, was a female toy poodle and Yorkshire Terrier mix. She was smaller than the two male cats and generally intimidated by them. Smokey was a handsome grey Persian. The other cat was a bob-tailed tabby named Sylvester, who quickly got the nickname of Sylly because he was the Mortimer Snerd of cats - a dummy. His bobtail was the result of a genetic mutation rather than an accident or cosmetic surgery. It was clear he got short-changed on the other end, too.
We could look into Smokey's eyes and see a typical cat - keen and cunning. But looking into Sylly's eyes was like looking into a Jack O' Lantern which did not have a candle in it. I recall one incident when my sisters and I stood at the kitchen window and watched as Sylly, who had obviously gotten too close to a bird's nest in the pyracantha bush on our back fence, was repeatedly dinged on the head by a dive-bombing, protective mother bird. Sylly would take a few cautious steps across the lawn. The mother bird would hit him and and he would look to the right and the left but could not figure out what was attacking him. We were yelling "Look up, LOOK UP!" but poor Sylly could only crawl to the safety of our covered back porch.
One evening we gathered in the living room after dinner to watch TV. Mom was in her recliner chair in the corner and I sat on the sofa between my two sisters. It should be noted the sofa was not in its usual place in front of our bay window but facing the fireplace for a more cozy arrangement. In that position it blocked part of the wide entrance to our dining room.
For reasons known only to him, Sylly started running around in little circles in the middle of the living room. I had noticed earlier he sometimes seemed to be chasing an imaginary tail. Smokey joined in.
Mikki decided to act like a dog and started chasing the cats. Their small circles quickly turned into a race track which extended into the dining room. We probably should have stopped them at that point but our pets were more entertaining than whatever we we watching on TV and we started laughing. That seemed to stimulate them and they picked up speed. Suddenly Smokey took a flying leap over the coffee table in front of my sisters and me, probably intending to land on the back of the sofa. But I was in the way. All I saw was a grey furry mass heading straight at me. I screamed. That was a big mistake because one of Smokey's hind feet went right into my mouth. The other hit me on the top of the head.
In the frantic seconds which followed I cautiously checked to make sure I still had a face. I was relieved to look at my hands and not see blood. My sisters stopped laughing long enough to ask "Are you alright?" I told them I thought I was but could not believe Smokey's foot went right into my mouth. They cracked up even more. From the other side of the room Mom did not think the whole thing was THAT
FUNNY. She knew what might be coming.....
I am allergic to cats. Also dogs, birds, a variety of trees and just about every kind of grass on earth. When I was young a scratch from a cat would result in a large red welt and major itching. Even now I avoid petting cats because I usually end up with swelling around my eyes. More than ten years of allergy shots helped to relieve my sensitivities and in this case probably prevented a major allergic reaction.
One of Smokey's claws had pierced my tongue. It started to swell. When Mom learned that she began making plans to ge me to a hospital. But as an adult I found the thought of having to explain what happened so embarrassing I refused and said I would take an antihistamine and suck on an ice cube instead. Fortunately my home remedies halted the swelling and within a couple of hours it was clear I was going to be okay.
In retrospect I now realize I probably risked my life by not seeking medical help. But at least I did not have to bear the humiliation of telling emergency room personel a cat stepped on my tongue.
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