Animals and stuff

I decided to write a blog since I have free time.. and then I won't have to write a huge one later in the week.

Yesterday (Tuesday) I woke up at the normal time. I had breakfast and then Felipe told me that we were going to Puriscal (a different canton/district of San Jose than the one we are living in). I asked him "right now?"  in two different ways and he responded with yes both times. So, I got ready kind of fast and then after an hour of waiting (lol), we headed out- me, Felipe, an uncle whose name is prounced Hi-me, and Oscar.

We drove for about 2 hours through mostly curvey well paved roads. When we finally made it to our destination, I noticed tons of cow trailers and could her a voice or something through speakers not too far away. When we got out of the car, we walked over to this place where they were auctioning tons of cows. There were stands filled with people looking at and bidding on the cows as they came through one by one and got auctioned off. We walked around a bit and just relaxed. Jyme (maybe that's how it's spelled?) had 5 baby cows that got auctioned off so we were there for him to collect the money. Also, the cows that I went with Oscar to get a few days ago would have been here for auction if they were fat enough.

It was a little disturbing to see honestly.. the cows were just stuck in their own filth, hitting each other and probably really scared. The guys with the cattle prods and long sticks were just laying into them at times to get them to move where they needed to go. I've never been to anything like that and for a second I started to imagine slavery in the U.S. and how many people people were treated probably a lot like this animals, getting poked and yelled at in a language you don't understand and then being pushed off into a cage in front with tons of people looking trying to inspect you to see what you are worth to them. That thought made me want to cry though, so I stopped thinking about it...

On our way back, we had different random stops (probably since they had all gotten payed from the cows).. and I of course had diarrhea. I thought I was good when we left but after about an hour of driving, I started to lose hope and asked if there was a bathroom near by. They found a place and I took care of business and then we were off again. I felt kind of bad for making us stop but if we hadn't I would have been in some serious discomfort and in retrospect, I might not have made it.


We got back a little before dinner and I chilled for the rest of the night. I think Felipe went without me to care for the 2 oxen still in the corral.

This morning I got up and went with Felipe down to the corral. I cared for the pig while he collected and brought some zacate (that purple/green food plant) for the oxen. We fed them and then went back for some more zacate in the place that we needed to clear out. While I was cutting the small stuff that was left in the places we'd already cut (because it's going to need to get cleared out for sugar cane), Felipe said that he saw a culebra (snake). I was kind of excited to see it because I hadn't seen one yet but I stayed back pretty far while Felipe did work. Evidently as he was clearing with his machete it tried to bite him (luckily he wasn't clearing by hand) and I think he cut it towards the back half. The snake kind of fell/slithered down the hill and then started hiding under a coffee plant. Felipe kind of slid down the hill after it and then waited for the snake to get in a good position- and then he got it right under the head- instantly 'killing it'. He got it on a stick and put it on a stump for me to see but he still told me to stay back from it. It's body and mouth were still kinda slowly moving for about 30 minutes until it just fell off the stump with its mouth open.

a few seconds after killing it

He wanted me to take a picture with it.. :p

it was draped over the stump and started curling like you can see here. Kinda interesting...

It was a little nerve racking afterwards because evidently these snakes usually live around others. We didn't find anymore though- which I suppose is good? We fed the oxen what we had collected and then got to cutting up these old lemon trees that had never gotten "planted." They were thorny and all close together and a pain in the butt. Felipe would up root them with this big sharp metal rod thing and then I would carry them off under the Guanacaste tree. I made a video of the trip back and fourth to the lemon tree to kind of a give an idea on where I was at. Sorry it's shaky and not very great..

While making my trips back and fourth.. I found a stick bug! It was so cool and so stick-like... I loved him. After putting him back in a tree though, I eventually lost him :(

Stick bug! He was missing one of his front legs.. it probably got pulled off when I was carrying the lemon trees :(.

In his natural habitat

We moved the plants for a few hours and ate lunch.. and then once all the lemon plants were done, we picked some oranges from a tree and enjoyed them. I also went back to the mango tree nearby that didn't have any ripe mangos last week and found the a good one on the ground! It was delish. So we had a mango and oranges snack and then I planted the mango seed with Felipe's supervision. One day, that seed will provide delicious mango fruit for generations to come.

After our snack we lead the cows up to the house so that they could get some exercise in the field up here, I think.

And that's all for now. Thanks!