I found a place outside I like to sit in the morning sun before the muchachos show up for work. My morning place is behind a large pile of gravel that was dumped for cement near the end of the compound. It’s near where our wall drops off at the arroyo about 12 feet below. There are a lot of trees there, kind of like wilderness. I don’t know why no one has discovered what a nice, solitary place it is. In the morning, the sun hits this spot for about 45 minutes and I sit under a skinny tree next to a round rock in that sunny spot overlooking the “River”, which is a thin, little drainage system in the middle of this small Mexican mountain community. Large boulders give a clue as to the turbidity that the summer monsoons will bring later in the year.
What I see in the arroyo are River Chickens. These are the luckiest chickens in the world, maybe. They are completely liberated to do what chickens like to do the best. At night, they go up into the trees to sleep on the branches — all but one big fat hen, who hides her brood of ten or so yellow fluffy chicks in clever places for a chick to survive the hunting dogs at night. I’ve heard of pigs eating chicks, at least on farms, but here I notice the pigs – even large ones – don’t bother the chickens. They all mingle and sniff at the same things: pig and chicken kind of interesting things.
The reason they are River Chickens is because they follow the River like kayakers looking for a place to put in. They roam the banks and wade up to their chicken knees looking looking looking for – for what? For things that move. I see them flick their heads back and forth with alert darts and then deftly peck and snatch up whatever thing it was they saw moving. Mayflies, I think. Caddis, maybe. Stonefly? Whatever it is they are looking for it definitely lives on rocks near the River. That’s why they are River Chickens.
The reason I have to hide behind a pile of cement gravel is because the lovely kitchen ladies drape me first thing in the morning in a barrage of colloquial Tameapa-style Spanish. Even with a dictionary, their words are slightly modified from standard Spanish, are definitely slurred. Plus, they spew forth syllables that roll off their tongues like bags of beans let loose to fall on the floor. May as well be beans to me. I can hardly keep up with their animated faces and waving hands let alone their sentences. I have to concentrate and separate the words and repeat the part I don’t know and go through a pantomime of what I think they might be trying to say and all the while simply trying to get my coffee in a hot cup mixed by spoon with milk and chocolate syrup (the only way to make camp coffee taste special). Then, I leave the kitchen with them still yammering, laughing and begging me to dance like Vaz, (a Russian geophysicist who was a big hit at a wedding reception we attended – I mime dancing like a Russian Cossack including the utterance of, “Heh! Heh! Heh!” such as I have seen in movies. Vaz is big as a bear and danced with stomping feet that amazed the ladies. They have not and likely will never forget the sight.)
I used to sit in the sun outside the kitchen but the muchachos (workers) who saw me there learned I am a sitting target in the morning sun and began to wait for me in order to practice English and say useful things like, “How-are-you-I-am-fine-thank-you-very-much” all in one sentence. Then, they ask me questions like, do I have children and why not and how old am I and am I married and where do I live and do I have any nieces and how old are they and so on. Lovely men. Lovely times. All in early morning Spanish.
So, now, before anyone sees me, I go to the far side of the gravel pile before people arrive. Then, when people start to mill dangerously near, I leave my study of the ways of River Chickens so that no one discovers my private recluse to plan their ambush of my redoubt the next day.
Today, I watched some plump red chickens wading peacefully along, dipping here and there to pick up a wriggling thing of interest. I used to think that if I were to have a choice for returning again to this world, I would want to return as my own dog (my dogs are very lucky animals.) Now, I think I might like to come back as a River Chicken of Tameapa and wade in the River and sleep in trees. Maybe the River Chickens of Tameapa are already living in a higher state of enlightenment, (just shorter stature) than us Human things.
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