hammockfull of happiness

the guy who lives next to the clinic, hernandez, had two puppies in september, brother and sister. i named the male dog dylan and meredith named the female dog pola. they were delightful and frisky and always sneaking into the clinic to play. after about a month someone stole dylan and he was gone and that was sad. pola became the clinic dog when hernandez left for long periods at a time. she grew bigger and stronger and don tito took care of her and fed her tortillas and gave her baths and he giggled up a storm because she was a funny dog.

this is a picture of pola hanging out with an eggplant bush.

now, i am not a dog lover. usually i greet dogs with a nonchalant hand wave from a small distance away and that's about it. but pola was a kickass dog so i played with her and hugged her and sometimes she came with me on house visits.

about three weeks ago pola was killed. according to the 5 year old who lives on the other side of the clinic, her dad caught pola stealing toilet paper from their bathroom and then put poison in her water. don tito still doesn't know who did it but i can't exactly rat out the 5 year old and plus don tito carries a pistol. by the time i got to the clinic the next morning don tito had already buried her. he was sad. i was sad. we were all sad. hernandez was sad that i was sad because he has a crush on me. remember the guayaba with the letters carved into it? hernandez. he said, we'll get a new dog.

but he upped the ante big time. he stole three baby rabbits from a nest on the mountain, stuck them in his backpack along with some grasses, and presented them to me. "take them, i'm not gonna take care of them anymore, they're for you." the first two days he presented them i said no. yesterday i said yes.

is this a terrible idea? obviously it is. i am leaving el salvador on march 28. oh by the way yeah i'm finishing my job and coming back to the states fyi. but i will raise them until then and find someone in las delicias who wants them when i leave. and maybe they will eat them but i don't want to know. i feed them warm milk from a tiny syringe into their little mouths and sometimes they blow tiny milk bubbles out of their tiny squinchy noses.

i am now taking suggestions for names - obviously trio names are best. but also trio names where it's ok if one of them dies, or two. they are probably about two weeks old. fair chance of survival but not stellar. i miss pola, but at least now i have a time-consuming, whimpering distraction.

just another saturday afternoon in a hammockfull of baby rabbits and mangoes

welcome to my life