los animales

I coexist with a variety of animals here. Luckily this doesn’t include lions, tigers, or anything poisonous. We’re pretty lucky in Vanuatu! No killer animals (except the wild bulls and pigs! None on Ambae, but they were on Moso where we had training) and nothing that will bite you and kill you. This makes walking in the bush much more relaxing! We’ve got cows, pigs, horses, chickens, dogs, cats, many different birds, snakes, critters, and the infamous rats. That’s it, that’s our spread! We all get along pretty well and for the most part, I really don’t notice their presence. Whenever I’m on the phone with someone at home and they ask what the hell that noise is, I remember that there are over 50 chickens on school grounds who squawk and cluck, sharing their business with whoever will listen. Chicken have a bunch of different songs. Tunes telling stories such as “I just laid an egg” or “they’re ready to hatch” or “Alison is the best, she’s welcome to all the eggs her belly desires.” Or at least I’m pretty sure about that last one.  Cows have songs, too. Just recently I heard some new moos. My auntie said it was mama cows who couldn’t find their babies. Another day I heard a sad song. I learned that the cows just found the blood of another cow that was killed and were mourning for him.

When my island mates spent the weekend at my site, Thomas helped me build a ladder for the house blo fowl attached to my bush kitchen. It’s like a chicken annex. And it’s in use! There’s nothing like fresh eggs. The puskats use the cubbies, too, for snoozing. A multipurpose triplex.
Other than the brand spanking new chicken coop, my bush kitchen has a few good egg spots in it. Pretty often when I peek behind the firewood or dry coconut leaves, I spy a handful of freshly laid eggs. Sometimes I scoop them up for omelets, breakfast tacos, and eggs over easy, but usually I let them be so they can sprout and become chicks. My kitchen is an egg-laying hotspot, so usually the eggs belong to more than one hen. At one point in July or so there were 4 mama fouls making egg drop soup in there. When it came time to roosting, they all laid (ha!) on top of each other, pecking at each other for the 20 or so days of incubation. Eventually 2 backed off, so by the time the eggs hatched, two moms claimed the litter.  I saw these moms leading the new chicks around town and got a kick out of it. I now call them the lesbihens and they don’t seem to mind. I saw this as a good opportunity to casually bring up the idea of same sex marriage to my family. Sometimes two men or two women love each other and in America, they can now get married and live happily ever after! I received blank stares. A progressive toktok gone exactly as expected!

lesbihens

One day I saw a chicken carry her eggs, one by one, in her beak out of my kitchen and off to somewhere seemingly better. It was bizarre. Maybe my kitchen just wasn’t fancy enough. We can’t please everyone.

Speaking of taking your business elsewhere. Lucky, one of the family dogs, is pregnant again! One weekend when my brother OB was home, we set up her usual birthing place near the big tree that Wala the pig lived in. We set up iron to block the wind and rain, made sure there were dried leaves down, dusted out the cobwebs. The works.  I brought Lucky over and showed her the luxury suite and she seemed please. A week or so later, we found her in the morning with 6 newborn pups in a hole she dug behind my parent’s house! Total curveball. I couldn’t be offended because the pups were so damn cute and she clearly chose the best place for her. We built her a shade structure and she was happy go Lucky.

pupville usa

Now the pups have grown and they are great! No one here really likes puppies or other adorable things, so it’s just me having nonstop puppy parties. Puppy parties consist of me singing “puppy party!” and all the pups pile on top of me and do puppy things like lick my leg. While everyone stares with disgusted looks and talk in language about crazy Alison. I’d say I’m pretty used to it by now.
There is, of course, the runt. His name is Lagegi which means runt or last born. He is becoming stronger, but still has a crazy glossed over look in his eyes. I love him.  My favorite is the fattest one we call Sandy because he looks like the sandbeach.  My family is planning on keeping him and actively trying to get rid of the rest. This is Lucky’s 4th litter just since I’ve been in service. Poor dog, surrounded by too many male dogs. Her puppies are scattered all over northeast Ambae and they’re all healthy and beautiful.

master quinn

wild eyed lagegi the runt

My puskat Fule Biti is still pretty biti, but she’s starting to grow. She still thinks that my other puskat Quinn is A.) a female and B.) her mom and tries to titi him. I think Quinn is cool with it now, so I’m not sure which one of us is going to break it to Fule that she’s all wrong. Other than attempting to breastfeed off of a male armpit and sleeping all day, Fule has become quite a huntress. I’ll wake up to the sound of her playing with the rat in my house, tossing it around (dead or alive) like a toy, and finally munching it down after she’s bored with it. The funniest thing to me is when the cats growl at me when I see them with the rat. They give me the “this is my rat, not yours” glare with such seriousness, as if I had a nasty habit of stealing their prey.

One night I was storying on the mat with my mama and we heard an owl screeching. Or I heard a noise and my mama heard an owl screech. And then she informed me of what we were hearing. I like owls! But on Ambae they are a symbol of black magic. ManAmbae believes that people who practice black magic can turn themselves into owls and spy on you and send down curses. So this owl won’t go away and my mama is kind of freaking out. She started getting worked up that someone sent this messenger owl to hurt her. And there’s nothing in the world I can do to calm her nerves because it’s a kastom belief. And kingfishers are another black magic bird. When a kingfisher sings out to you from your right side, it’s good luck. But if it’s from the left, it is actually the devil trying to hurt you and you have to scream  “devil go lus!” or get lost!