Scuttlebutts

I still haven't gotten used to dog droppings in the business district.

Well, true, every district is the business district, so I guess that means that crap is a universal commodity.

And I'm not entirely sure that they're all dog droppings. Men still urinate in any old corner that calls to them. Boys too. And I once came around a corner to see a man in front of a restaurant rising from a squatting position while pulling up his pants. I know that he was pulling up his pants because he was pulling up his pants and because I could see his peepee, which you don't see when a guy already has his pants up, which he didn't.

That was enough proof for me.

I didn't go over to conduct an investigation about what exactly his mission had been, though I can guess, which is where the comment about poop types came from.

Not cats though. Cats don't go out. They stay inside the walls of their home territories, so it's dogs or humans, I'm guessing, but mostly dogs. Who do a bang-up job of keeping the sidewalks supplied with shit.

Never the streets. Only the sidewalks.

Maybe the streets are too dusty.

I don't know. But I'd probably try there first, if I was to do that, but not having done it, I don't know the relative advantages and disadvantages, so let's give it to the dogs. They know more than I do about where to crap and why to crap there, and it's my job to deal with it. Which I do.

Which invalidates my opening statement, because I deal with it, by watching for it, and by walking around it. So in that sense I've gotten used to it.

Maybe I should have said that I haven't gotten to like it, and don't expect that I ever will, but I'm used to dealing with it, which is sort of one small step toward becoming someone who belongs here. In a way. Though I'll never fit in. I know that. I can't help it.

I'm like a rat in that respect. I've seen a few rats around here, and we have some things in common.

Except that most rats that I've seen have been dead. We don't have that in common. OK, fine. Remove one more point for inconsistency.

But one thing that rats and I do share is that we all prefer to be invisible. Think about it. How many rats have you seen today?

Not that many, right?

Same as yesterday? Same as forever? That's my goal. I want to be that invisible. It just feels better. For me. I don't care about you. Go ahead and be whatever you want to be, and I'll be invisible, thanks. It's my natural cozy-zone, same as a rat's.

Whenever I say this, someone asks me what I would do if I was invisible. Just watch me do something, then imagine that I wasn't there, and you've got it. Stupid question. Being invisible would be like being able to punch holes in buildings with my fist. If I could to punch holes in buildings with my fist, then I would to punch holes in buildings with my fist. Duh?

If I was invisible then the thing I would do would be being invisible. Go ahead and extrapolate that up to the period in the previous sentence and you have it. That's it. Period.

So one day I saw a rat appear before my eyes. This does not happen often. In daylight no less. Just after lunch.

Rat came out of a house, under the big wide door in the front wall, ran across the sidewalk and out into the street, then turned to the right and ran in my direction along the street until it saw me. Oh-oh. Caught being visible. Stalemate. Couldn't go forward, couldn't go back. I stood and watched the motionless rat. The motionless rat stood and watched the motionless me. Then I decided to move a little, or maybe I whistled softly, and the rat bolted (once again in my direction) to a hole in the street along the curb, and scuttled into the hole. Done — invisible again.

That was a couple of years ago.

A few months ago I saw another day-rat on a busy street. Most rats that I've seen in daylight on busy streets here have been dead, and tended to be somewhat flat. I don't have the expertise to tell if they were flattened before or after death, but the results are similar: flatness, and being dead.

This other rat wasn't either dead or flat, but running, again in my direction. Running in the gutter, like all getout. Flat out, you could say. Pedal to the metal. All four on the floor. Truckin. A fast rat.

I'm a rat magnet. I stopped to watch. I watched as it came at me, watched as it passed me, watched as it continued to run like a scared rat farther down the street, until it came to a curb cut. Whereupon it veered left, crossed the sidewalk, and went into a shop. Shops here have big doors, often as wide as garage doors back in the U.S., and they are always wide open. This one was. Both wide and open, and now the shop had its own rat.

That's about it. About all I know. One young woman stopped as the rat came her way, and watched it cross in front of her and enter the shop, but no one else seemed to see it, or care if they did see it. No one seemed to see me watching, so that was nice. Made me feel cozy and invisible, which is how I'd like to feel all the time, but it's hard to pull off.

Somehow it almost feels like I've got it down, here, more than in the U.S., even though I stand out here like a burning bush in a wine shop. If that doesn't work, use whatever metaphor for incongruity that seems to work for you, but no one much around here seems to notice me. Maybe that's one reason I like it so much, me and the rats.

Dogs

They're everywhere.

I don't understand dogs. I do understand dogs. As much as I need to.

Dogs are as American as gunfire on the Fourth of July. Dogs are as American as spilled beer on a pickup truck seat. Dogs are as American as the smell of cigarette smoke and dried puke in a dark bar. Dogs are like drinking buddies. Dogs are like that belligerent guy who directly approaches you at the bus depot, completely unselfconscious, full of confidence, and tells you to give him a sandwich, or a cup of coffee, or a handful of your money. Because he wants it.

I understand dogs as much as I need to, and that amount is only enough to keep myself clear of them. I like dogs as much as I like some flabby, stinky, 200-pound ignoramus who has decided that his time and thirst and hunger and need for a pocket full of change are more valuable to the world and more important than mine.

Dogs are everywhere here. Dogs are everywhere everywhere. I guess I can't help that. If I could I would. If I had a little gizmo about the size of a pack of those cigarettes, and it had a big red button on it, and I could push that button and instantly kill every dog on earth, I'd do it. Before you could clear your throat. For better or worse.

And I understand the use of dogs. They are tools. Humans found that out early on. Dogs are self-mobile, self-cleaning, self-feeding, reliable tools. They make noise. That's the point, most of it. Dogs are alarm bells with teeth. Fences that chase intruders. Killers for hire, and all they require is a bit of meat, some water, and a place to sleep.

That's good value for a paleolithic hunting team. And for neolithic gardeners and gatherers. For medieval farmers. For suburban commuters. And for Latin city-dwellers. I get it. Tools. Some love them. I don't. That's me.

Today is Sunday. I'm up. It's 7:11 a.m. I've been up since 4:57, before even a hint of daylight.

One of the first things I noticed this morning was the sound of dogs barking. In the city. Here.

That's unremarkable for several reasons. One reason is that you'd expect to hear dogs — dogs are everywhere, remember? People like dogs, as a rule. I'm in a country that isn't that rich. So people rely on dogs. Dogs are cheap security. Granted.

But noticing the sound of dogs barking is remarkable in some ways.

I'm in the very center of a large city. I call it large. It's officially got 350,000 inhabitants. Some say more — closer to half a million, but that's the city and the rest of the province combined. But a lot. For me. It's definitely an urban area here, and I'm in the middle of it.

So hearing dogs barking at all hours in the middle of the commercial district of a large city is not normal for me, because I don't frequent such places, and because, where I come from, there are only faceless building facades and machines in the middle of large cities.

Different. Different here. I realize that. Fine. I still dislike dogs. I dislike dogs the way I dislike raw sewage flowing in the street. (I've seen that, not here but in Seattle, so don't assume I'm only in the mood to disparage a place that isn't like home. Seattle wasn't like home either, but the sewage was real, surging up out of a break in the asphalt, spreading itself and its load of turds and wiping-paper in a wide apron across the southbound lane.) That much is how much I dislike dogs.

So, what? What now?

Not much, just an observation. No point to this. Only a note scribbled on the wall.

I don't like dog shit on the sidewalks either. I expect that someone does, but in this case I'm willing to bet that I'm in the majority, even if most actually appreciate the source of that shit while I prefer the shit to its producer. The good news in the world of local shit is that this is the rainy season. Rain washes. But there is bad news here too.

The rain doesn't seem to do anything for the shit. Shit falls. Shit sits. Shit dries. Rain falls, wets shit. Rain quits, and we got soft, smeared wet shit to deal with, because if there is one thing that people do with dog shit, it's to step in it and smear it around as much as they can. The rain doesn't seem to wash anything else away either. I still can't figure this out.

After the rain dries, the sidewalks are dusty and dull again. They're tile, not the rough concrete I'm used to, so I'm still surprised by this. I don't know about tile, except that when it's wet, it's as slippery as snot on a doorknob, so I keep expecting it to wash clean in the rain but it doesn't. We're always left with dusty shitty tiles. And barks.

Even at five Sunday morning.

You want some dogs? We got 'em. As many as you can carry. I'll even help you load them in your truck.

Secret Cat Secrets

I read that they used to burn cats here, for fun, in the main public park.

Well, they used to do a lot of things in a lot of places, and not just with cats. Sometimes, in some place, they burned people, not so much for fun but to feel good about keeping things orderly by suppressing evil. People are like that, which is why I don't trust many of them, but I'd be more willing to trust someone who burned witches than someone who burned cats.

Or do I have that backward? I'm not sure any more, which is how it gets when you grow older.

Being young, when you're young, when everyone you know is young and anyone who matters is young, then things are much clearer. Things are obvious, and right is not wrong, and wrong is definitely wrong. And so, you might burn cats or your neighbors, and go home feeling happy about it, and only much later realize the regret, when it is decades past the point that you can reconsider.

Cats think for themselves and come home dragging their own opinions, which are often at odds with the opinions of those who want to dress them in cute outfits, let alone those with a fulsome supply of matches and not enough to do, because cats have to look out for themselves.

Cats are small mostly solitary animals. Housecats are. Bobcats and cougars are different — not sociable, not domesticable. Housecats are like your grumpy uncle Ed who huffs and snorts a lot and seems to disapprove of everything but always seems to come around needing a little company, and maybe he's the one who leaves you $600,000 and a note saying thanks for being there, and then you wonder if you really know what's going on.

Cats are small. They know it, and humans are gigantic in comparison. They know that too, and don't want to get stepped on, so they hang back until they feel sure that you're safe to be around. And they aren't pack animals, so if you want a relationship with a cat, it's a one-on-one deal. You are judged on your performance, not on your species. You have to do more than show up and throw an occasional stick across the lawn.

And another thing — a cat has to be socialized as a kitten, or else you'll never see it, let alone be become its buddy. If a kitten isn't handled daily during its first two months, then it will be wild forever, and nothing you or anyone else can do will make any difference at all. So cats are not dogs. They have to learn while young that humans are OK, and then they have to learn as adults that a particular human might be OK. It takes work. On your part.

Which has something do I guess with why I don't see many cats around here. They have places to hide, and they do.

There are no yards or fences here to sit in or on. No porches. There are no wild brushy spots between houses. There is nothing like a park here, as North Americans know parks. Here, this city (and judging from photos, most Latin American cities) are piles of stone and concrete and slabs of pavement all jumbled. These are not great areas for cats to lounge in, so they don't get out and lounge.

A cat here might have a secret hidey-hole in a wall that it can crawl into and peek through, or a chink elsewhere that serves as a spy-hole, or it might have a balcony to lounge on, above you, above traffic, above danger, but not much else.

The action here is inside. The action here is on the inside of city blocks and not the outside. Inside homes. City blocks here are hollow. Houses are facades with whole worlds behind them, hidden. Gardens are inside, as are the trees and shrubs and what safety there is.

That's where the cats stay, and where life happens, and why I don't get to see too many of my little buddies. Which leaves me a bit lonesome then. My loss.

Pet Chiropractic With Doctor Duane

Do you have a pet that's alive?

Do you want to keep it that way? Try me. I need work.

My name is Doctor Connerwell Duane (of the Cleveland Duanes) and I have a degree in Pet Work. You may have heard of me since I have advertised in the past: Dr. Doctor Connerwell Duane D.P.C. (Doctor of Pet Chiropractic). My mother named me Doctor. Little did she know...

But back to me.

Are your pets suffering from the wear and tear of living? Could be. Pets get around, you know, even when you're not watching. First they wear, then they tear. Or the other way around. I have it written down somewhere.

But not to fear — I can help, I think. In fact I'm almost sure of it. My fees are so low it's almost a shame. Sometimes I cry myself to sleep. You can watch if you want, some time. It's pretty amusing. I have surveillance tapes to prove it.

If you have rabbits, cats, dogs, other stuff, I can handle it all. Even livestock, but prefer not to touch fish, especially the moody ones, and those electric things. I saw one once and still have nightmares sometimes, but usually cats and dogs are about as extreme as people get though I have been known to do a pretty good job with swine. (Some of my favorites being the Gloucestershire Grunter, Rhode Island Red Sox, and your ever-popular Leghorn Oinkmaster.)

Hamsters, no — too small. Sometimes they just turn to mush inside. Must be something about how the pressure points are arranged. They all seem to be defective that way and I've never had any luck, though I usually win in court.

Anyhoo — hey, give me a toot and I'll come-a-runnin'. Got nothing much else to do until my extradition hearing in a few months, so if you have a li'l fuzzy buddy that can still move under its own power every so often, maybe I can still do some damage.

Did I say that I have over 20 years of experience and would be happy to evaluate your beloved animal companion? Or just sit on the patio and toss back a few if you haven't got much else going on. I don't, mostly. I am pretty decent with past life regressions too, and you'd be surprised what some animals have been through if you can get them to talk.

Sometimes you can't shut them up again, which is why I mostly prefer pets that are small enough to fit inside a box. That usually works, but we can play it by ear. I have learned lots of tricks over the years and can probably be of some help, so call then, OK?

Yours very truly,

Dr. Doctor Connerwell Duane, DPC
email: cuenca_critter_twister@gmail.com

P.S. I'm not in the phone book anymore since they took my phone away, so email. Try it and see if it still works.

Oinki Fadeout

[Cue quiet snork.]

Three years ago it was all over.

I've photographed it dozens of times in dozens of places.

Sometimes only a pair of nostrils in an ellipse, sometimes a circle with two eyes, two nostrils, and a mouth line. Sometimes one or the other accompanied by an OINK!

I read the last as oinki. Whatever, exclamation mark or the letter I, it works.

My pal was everywhere, including a couple of feet below the second-floor roof of Mercado 10 de Agosto. That's a public market. It's full of people all day, and when it isn't, it's locked up tight.

I don't know how Oinki got there but there Oinki was. (Gone now. Painted over.)

Gone from a lot of places now. Faded. Washed out. Washed off. Hidden under corrective layers of new paint.

Whatever — however, my friend is fast fading from the scene.

So I was happy today to see Oinki again on Avenida Loja. But hurting. And it's only a matter of time before Oinki is no more.

Like all the rest of us.

Buzz Lunch

You hits it, you eats it.

I think it's the cabbage. What else would explain all those flies at a vegetarian restaurant?

Of course it could be me. I go and flies follow. Everywhere I am, they are too. It may be ordained by heaven.

Or it may not — it could be that I stink. But I think that it's the cabbage. And if not, then it's because I stink.

But if it is my stink, then that stink precedes me, and arrives before I do in locations that I hadn't planned on visiting.

Mystery.

But definitely, there is one place that I notice flies, and that is at the Salutary Relationship Chop House of Good Eats. It is marginally a chifa house.

Chifa is Chinese cooking using local ingredients. The U.S. version is chop suey, but in Peru it's huge. In Peru and Ecuador it's called chifa.

The Salutary Relationship Chop House of Good Eats isn't quite that. Not that close to chop suey. Not all that close to anything.

For the typical cafeteria-style almuerzo (lunch) there, you'll find four mostly-raw options of mixed salad-like vegetables, plus two deep fried items, and then two stews, all meatless, but often containing varieties of soy concoctions wearing meat-like disguises. You get to pick four of the eight selections offered, and the whole deal comes with rice, a bowl of soup, and a glass of juice.

And flies.

I think it's the cabbage. Cabbage has two prominent qualities.

• It has a pungent odor not readily apparent to all humans, but there, and pungent.
• It contains a lot of sulfur. This makes flies think it's poo.

One way to deal with flies is to spray bug killer indiscriminately. Or hang flypaper. (By a wide margin though, diners prefer eating poison to sitting beneath flypaper.)

A third way to defeat flies is by installing window-and-door screening, and then keeping those windows and doors shut.

The Salutary Relationship Chop House of Good Eats has another way — rubber bands.

These are used by Feng (pronounced Fung). Let's call him that, whatever his name is. He runs the cash register. And hunts flies when it's a slow day.

And the way Fung does it is the way you or I would do it — loop the rubber band around the tip of your off hand's thumb, point at your target, and use your other hand to cock the weapon and fire.

Except that not so many of us would do this in view of customers in the dining area of any eatery, be it Ed's House of Slop or Delmonico's.

Fung's prey of choice flits anywhere and everywhere — ceiling, tables, chairs, walls, and he shoots with deadly care. Whether he takes out any of those nasty buzzing disease balls is a matter of speculation, since I cannot personally confirm any hits, and do not actually know the effect of a rubber band strike on the diminutive but sturdy exoskeleton of Musca domestica. This may require more deliberate study.

Nor did I see Fung recover anything other than spent rubber bands, though it is possible that his den is chock full of fly heads delicately mounted, moose-like, on tiny plaques, out back.

I Found What Does It, Then

Observing the Mobile Beaker Patrol.

This is a reasonably clean place, this Cuenca, Ecuador.

No, you try it.

What?

Eating off the pavement — I don't have that much to prove, especially to you.

When I say that Cuenca, Ecuador is a clean place, it is your job to then take that blanket statement and put it into perspective. Feel free to add as many grains of salt as you can find.

Suggestions follow.

Fleur de Sel? Fine. Sel Gris? OK by me. Flake Salt, then, how about that? Well, not to point any fingers, but if the flake fits, then shove it up your nose, Bub. Himalayan? Yep, from a place noted for its fine, clean beaches and abundance of cod. Shio? Surely. Curing Salt? If you be ailing you, and you got the prescription, then start shakin' it, mate.

Any other salt? Ditto, as if I really cared. Go do it or not. I'm only trying to make a point, so quit being literal or I'll come over there and whack you with a bag of pepper.

Now, back to our regularly-scheduled, one-way discourse. This is a reasonably clean place, this Cuenca, Ecuador. And "Why?" you may ask, including actual quotes to make you sound not only snooty, but worth taking seriously, in a dead old white man suit-wearing way.

Because. (My favoritest rebuttal, good for all occasions.)

Because there is a whole cadre of street sweepers here, in uniform, sweeping streets all day, every day, manually. Partly for that reason. And when I use the phrase all day, every day I do. Mean it. Including New Year's Day. At least New Year's Day of 2013, when I saw more than one of these public employees on the job, early, operating brooms with vigor.

Partly for that reason. And partly because many forms of "waste" in other parts of the world are properly regarded here as resources. Profit centers. Opportunities. What ends up on the street and does not get used is not useful. Dog poop, for example. Tiny scraps of paper. Things like that — things we, as of yet, as a species, have not found it useful to capture and carry home for resale or for folding into other products or into our foodstuffs.

And then there are those other substances — organic waste that is not dog poo or human poo (or, during the December through March holiday season, random surprise scatterings of horse poo).

Organic "waste" such as...? Spilled grain, or spilled food of any kind, like bread crumbs or pork bits. Anything. And this is where the auxiliary corps comes in — Cuenca's unpaid, volunteer sanitary engineers. Pigeons.

It required eight months of living here and a measure of imagination before I realized the truth. This place is swarming with pigeons, as are many cities. (That is not the truth part, yet. We will come to it shortly.) I have seen people feeding them (the pigeons), but when they (the pigeons) aren't being fed, they forage.

They forage. That is the key, the truth-part, right there. Did you see it go by? If not, then go back and read it now.

When foraging, pigeons peck at anything. Hell — everything. Everything, and especially anything too small for me to see. If it's there, it gets a peck, whether I can imagine a beakable peck target or not. Peck. Peck. Peck-peck-peck-peck-peck-peck-peck. All day. Everywhere.

That's the secret. Peckers, all over, going at it like crazy.

Pigeons. Pigeons and their insistent peckers.

They are always around, pecking at every damn thing, visible or not, and they probably clean up as much garbage as anyone or anything else. Because if they don't do this they'll have to go back to the countryside and try making a living there, or to New York City, or Dallas. Or Buenos Aires. Any of which might be seriously worse than country life with its constantly muddy feet and no movie theaters or sparkly lights anywhere.

No one wants to live in Buenos Aires or Dallas these days, if they can avoid it. Or the countryside where hard work is unavoidable, if you prefer a life of eating and pooping and not much else. Which is kind of the Way of the Pigeon, I guess.

So they're here. And they, too, do poo. On everything.

I'll let you know PDQ (which is slang for posthaste) if I find what eats pigeon poo. But I don't believe there is such an angel being, cuz that stuff there? That there stuff? That stuff (pigeon poo), no one cleans up. Not even the rain.

Paradise — love it or poop on it.

And so. This is me signing off again, and stepping around what I don't want to carry home on my shoes.

Poo In Paradiseland

Unwrapped urban gifts.

I think I've learned it by now, but who can be sure, really, when sidewalk-level poop is involved?

Learned what?

Well, for example, to watch where I put my feet.

Sounds simple, right? It is, really, it really is. But remembering to watch is harder. The remembering-to-watch part tends to escape and run off into fields of frequent daydreams. Or, in case you want to remain alive, it yields a close eye to traffic.

Poop disgusts but traffic kills. So maybe from time to time you end up with poo on your shoe, but you get home alive, which counts for something. Counts for a lot in my book.

And, truth be told, it isn't sidewalk-level poop that I'm usually watching for anyway — it's structural hazards. I don't know how to say it better, so, for example, what I mean is broken pavement, cracks, lumps, unexpected dropoffs, surprise up-steps — all that.

Watching for stumble bummers keeps a person alert. Alert enough to avoid incidental low-level embarrassments like poo. I've stepped off too many sudden drops to let my guard down now. Poo sightings have become ordinary, unsurprising, and expected, and they happen all day. Background noise. Because I've gotten enough hard knocks from local pavements not to trust them any farther than I can kick them.

Pigeons are probably the worst.

Where there is a shop, the owner usually cleans the store floor daily, sweeping small tidal waves of water out onto the walk, and then scrubbing that, and then sweeping the excess away. Where there isn't a working shop the walkway may be cleaned only by rainfall and shuffling pedestrian feet. Seldom to never in any real sense, which is where pigeon poo finds its longest-term residence.

Dog (and human) droppings come and go daily. A lot gets swept into the street. Some gets mooshed flat and smeared, and eventually all of it dries and powders and becomes invisible.

Yes, human droppings. It's all poop in the end. Poop you probably don't want to become intimate with.

The main point is that poo is ever-present and omni-present, even if powdered and invisible. Which is why I don't wear shoes inside — street shoes come off and stay in the demilitarized zone of my entryway. Inside, closer to me, in my actual residence, the floor is swept, scrubbed, and clean.

Which is better, by my lights, than taking street poo to bed on the soles of my feet. Don't you think?

Peckers At Work

It's the probing beakers what done it.

I finally figured it out.

The pavement here in Cuenca is rough. Really rough.

Have you ever been to sea? I haven't, so I don't know what it's like. But I can imagine.

I can imagine a lot of things, but none of that matters here, so let's get on with it.

There are streets here, as you might know. Streets are pretty common these days. You see them all over, in all sorts of situations.

I don't really care much about the streets, except that I have to cross them. That's interesting. We'll cover that later on, some other day.

What concerns me more, because I have feet and use them for getting around, is sidewalks. I guess I should put that in quotes.

Like this: "sidewalks".

The quotes cover a lot of ground. I'll have to go into that in more detail later on. It's an almost infinite subject.

But right now let's talk lumps.

We have lumps here.

Lumps in the streets, lumps in the "sidewalks", lumps in the not-sidewalks, lumps all over.

You could say, if you wanted to say something, that the "sidewalks" are eroded, though some have been hacked up.

You could say, if you wanted to say something else, that the "sidewalks" have been hacked up, though some don't look like it so much. They look like they were assembled at midnight by a bunch of drunks.

But knowing next to nothing about how drunks work at midnight, I'm not exactly sure about that.

I do know, and am a particular expert in, walking on lumps, having spent many days hiking around and on the sides of, volcanoes, some of which are actually famous.

Mt Rainier, Mt Hood, Mt Adams, Mt St Helens. Get it?

No?

Go backpacking then, on the sides of volcanoes, and then we'll talk.

Anyway, I know some things about lumps, and on-lumpy walking. Some things. Enough things, I think.

Not bragging, just facts.

So here. We have lumpy surfaces to do the walking on. And.

I think I know why it is that way.

Beaks.

It's the pigeons and their peckers, always hammering at the pavement.

Pigeons are thick on the ground here, always slamming the sharp tips of their ever-refreshed beaks against the pavement, going after seeds and breadcrumbs and anything that looks remotely edible and is also peckable.

After a few centuries all those probing, pounding fore-pieces, however tiny, do have an effect.

Which is.

Lumpy "sidewalks".

Whether "sidewalks" is the right term we'll leave to the experts, but lumps I know.

And I think the pigeons done it.

Come and see and you'll agree. Maybe.