The Dog Days!

If you’ve been keeping up with us, you know there is no shortage of 4-legged friends here in Monteverde. The one that has caught our eye of late, is new to the mountain, about a year-old and is sweet with the children. He is called “Bebe”. Imagine a thin “collie” type dog. Bebe has been spending quite a bit of time at the Schaefer house and we all have gotten close to him until two days ago when I saw him rolling around in the side pasture in the dead armadillo (see previous post). Right then and there, he moved down to the bottom of my “who is my least annoying dog today” list. The stench was horrendous (if not having a dead armadillo wasn’t bad enough, now we’ve got it walking around on this dog…YUCK). The only conclusion we came to was that the dog was doing this to ward off attacks and advances from the other dogs in the neighborhood. We now know this to be true as Bebe was getting quite the ‘raz’ from the other pooches. We came to find out from a friend that Bebe had been ‘just’ adopted by Stella (the elderly lady) that owns the Bakery and other establishments here on the mountain. She lives in the hills and does not have any children to frolic with and keep Bebe as active as he clearly wants to be..after all, he’s just a pup. After a trip to the vet yesterday, a good washing, de-worming, de-fleeing and getting fixed, he was ready to spend his first night with Stella. Today while playing with the boys out front, there was Bebe with his adoptive mom, Veronica – Veronica tells me Bebe (now called Strider) ran away last night and wants to be with a family as he ended up on Veronica’s door step. So where does that leave me? He looks aweful lovable now, all fluffy and sweet smelling! Veronica tells me she would take him, but she already has 3 dogs of her own. Lots of folks have dogs here for many reasons, one of them for protection as petty-theft can be a problem. I am sure Bebe/Strider will be a topic at the dinner table tonight…stay tuned on his fate!

The boys spotted a deer in our side yard two nights ago – we missed it, but Kyle, the 8 year old boy (neighbor) vouches that yep, it was a deer. Kyle spent an hour in the pasture after school picking guavas with the boys and later took over the duty of pushing them on the swing…did I mention we love Kyle? We were happy when he accepted our invitation for dinner (Michael and John were delighted, so proud that they had a ‘big boy’ friend staying for dinner…very cute. Kyle proceeded to do the dishes post spaghetti – he said…’you feed me…I do the dishes’…what a great role model for our boys!

Last night Mike and the boys grabbed their flashlights about 7 p.m. and off they went looking for critters outside. Everything was pretty status-quo (your run of the mill finds…katydids, roaches, beetles) when all of a sudden, they came blasting through the door “mom, you’ve got to see this…hurry, hurry, hurry.” Crawling around the rocks that line our firepit was the grand-daddy of Wolf spiders – bigger than my hand fully extended (I kid you not). When I asked Mike if there was a chance it could find its way into our house (through cracks in the concrete, broken screens or under doors, Mike replied “no way, this thing is huge and way too big to squeeze through” – in some strange way, this was music to my ears and gave me some comfort.

So, just when you think you’ve had all the wildlife you can take, you are surprised with another find!

As you can see by the picture, our hammock is up and operational! I have yet to relax in it, but have dibs for sure sometime this weekend.

We enjoyed homemade tomales from Goudy’s mother-in-law last night – she is making some empinadas and breads for us today and will be by in the next thirty minutes…YUM – sure beats the beans and rice we seem to find on the Schaefer menu daily around here.

P.S. - A late photo added - Ginna - we love ya girlfriend! Our boys are completely engrossed whenever you are around and you break open a book - you have the gift!

Signed: S