Nocturnal Musings

Last night I couldn’t sleep.  Let me rephrase that.  I was sleeping and then SU, who had been up late watching the second installment of “The Hatfields and McCoys” came to bed and woke me up.  Then I couldn’t sleep.

I’m a light sleeper.  It comes from years of training.  When you have three children in the space of four years it happens.  My body has never been able to tell itself that it’s o.k. not to listen for every cough or fart in the house.  I have developed better sleeping habits since we’ve been living in Panama and I’ve gotten used to a lot of the night sounds around the campo.

Some nights, like last night I just give up after laying there for an hour or so.  Dos Gatos love it when I have one of my “roaming nights”.  They keep me company whether I sit on the couch reading or stand by the window watching the stars shine on or just laying in the spare bedroom listening to the crickets and the frogs.

On Monday night while sound asleep I was awoken by a strange noise.  The motion light when off over the shed illuminating the back yard and I heard what sounded like someone outside the window on my side of the bed.  Not knowing what to expect I looked out to see what it was.   There standing outside our window, munching on one of the banana leaves through the fence was a vaca.  In fact there was a whole herd of vacas right outside the window.  My only response was; “Holy crap!” which woke SU up.  One vaca was over at the Vecnio’s munching away on a hibiscus bush but the majority were along our fence line munching away on the grass or trying to get the banana leaves.  SU flew to the front porch with the fear that they were tramping through our front garden but luckily our little rancho fence kept them out.  He used his trusty slingshot to shoot some gravel at their feet and move them along out of the yards.  The only thing I could think of was; “What would our Panameño neighbors think about the crazy naked gringo standing outside at 4:00 in the morning?”  He did get them to move to the empty lots across the street where there was plenty of grass to graze on and all was quiet on the calle.

The next morning all the vacas were all miraculously gone from the calle.  We fully expected that they would still be outside grazing but I guess el ganadero must have noticed his livestock was missing before we hit the floor in the morning and rounded them up.  Either that or they’re still munching away somewhere around town.

We found out that the herd had really messed with Vecino’s garden.  They kicked out some edging around the front and had a field day on a couple of the poor hibiscus bushes.  They also broke the water line at Casa #3, leaving our new neighbors who are renting the house without water for most of the day.  Luckily the break was on the casa side and not the IDAAN side because that just would have been another nightmare.  At least on the casa side a plumber can be called to fix it.

Last night there was a doggie symphony going on while I was up and about.  Once one gets going the entire abajo side of town gets going.  Perhaps it starts over on the arriba side of town and it’s just a type of notification service.  Often times the roosters will throw a little melody of their own in.  I have a feeling that the male animals in this town just like to strut their stuff.  Loudly. And that includes the Homo sapiens.

As an aside our water tank sprung a leak a couple of weeks before Christmas.  After waiting for the original installer to come through with a new one and much back and forth with it, we finally had our buddy arrange for his water guy to install a new tank for us.  Our small tank leak had developed into a massive crater by the time we threw our hands up.  I’ll let you do the math on how long we waited for the other guy to arrange to bring us a new one.  One thing you learn very quickly here is that Panameños don’t like giving you bad news and once they stop answering their phone you might as well give up.  We had a nice little growth of algae developing from the water leaking all over the concrete pad and so after  our beautiful, now blue, water tank was installed SU took the power washer to it and the shed and now it looks spectacular.

Today promises to be another lovely day in the campo.   I hope that your day is equally lovely wherever you are.  And to our friends and family in Canada, be careful on those winter roads.  Muahh, muahh!