FELIPE, or No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

A week and a half ago Dalys came to work as usual on Friday morning. In an effort to be an amiable employer and simultaneously practice my Spanish skills, I remarked that I had seen their family dog, Lassie, who is old and blind, dangerously perambulating the main road up to Palo Alto. Dalys replied, sniffling a little, that it couldn't have been Lassie because Lassie died of old age about a month ago. We commiserated a bit, and she said the children had cried miserably for several days. I asked if they planned to get another dog, and she said that they clearly needed one but that it had to be a small or small-to-medium dog.

"No problema," I assured her. "The Amigos de Animales have animals for adoption, and there's even a website with pictures." We repaired to the computer room for a gander, but the only dogs currently available were too large. (I noticed that most appeared to have a little to a lot of Rottweiler blood in their ancestry, suggesting that home burglaries are not just a thing of the present.) There are lots of dogs that need homes, I assured Dalys, and I further assured her that I would put the word out for a smallish dog.

So I went to the Boquete forum, plead my case, and almost immediately received two responses. Millie, of Millie's Chic Boutique, a local salon de belleza (beauty shop), was said to have been looking for a new home for her poodle. Knowing Millie as I do, having gotten one of my bad haircuts from her, I knew that she was not looking for a Panamanian home for Fritzi, or whatever its name may be. Moreover, I couldn't quite envision Fritzi withstanding the ministrations of Roberto and Daisy, whom you may recall from the Christmas tree decorating event. So I moved on to the next offer.

An acquaintance, Dianne, an former Australian who is the proprietor of La Zapadora in Potrerillos, an eclectic warehouse of furniture, garden stuff, and other design elements from around the world, wrote to say that a small dog had been hanging out there for a period of time. It is a nice little dog, she assured me, not at all neurotic, but suffering from malnutrition and a skin condition which had developed over the past week. It was friendly, though a bit skittish, she further wrote, but she was afraid it would not last long, what with the lack of food and the traffic on the road out front. This sounded like just the ticket, so, on Sunday, I set out for Potrerillos, about twenty miles away, armed with dog food for enticing.

Dianne was busy with a client when I arrived but told me to scout around for the dog. I eventually located him in one of the outbuildings and coaxed him outside with food. It was clear that this was a dog that could not be offered to anyone; a number of ticks were visible and there were large hairless patches, red with inflammation, in addition to obvious malnutrition. He was nervous, but allowed me to pet him while he ate. Dianne and I talked a bit, and I told her I would see what I could do, having no intention of doing anything.

When I got back home, however, I was overcome with the guilt that accompanies doing nothing for a creature in need, and I had a sleepless night. Larry agreed to help me retrieve him, and a call to Dianne revealed that she had an old dog kennel that she would take with her that day. So on Tuesday Larry and I set out for Potrerillos, loaded the dog into the kennel with minimal trouble, and drove back to Boquete. Our first stop was the office of the local veterinarian, Dra. Chely, where, as Larry was unloading the dog via leash instead of kennel, he deftly escaped the chain noose and came within inches of being crushed by a pickup truck backing out of the driveway. Dra. Chely rushed to the scene, and the three of us spent half an hour chasing the dog through the back streets of Boquete, Larry cursing heartily and frequently. In his weakened state, the dog couldn't run fast, but he was quick as lightning whenever Dra. Chely tried to grab him. I alternately chased and moved the car closer until we finally caught him and returned, sweatily, to the clinic.

Dra. Chely, who is very animated, kept up a running discourse in Spanish while she removed ticks, swabbed him with alcohol, and administered three injections. She then wrote out prescriptions for a shampoo, tablets, and skin sensitive dog food, told us where they could be bought in Boquete, charged us $15, and sent us on our way. I thought the charge was imminently reasonable, given the lengthy foot race she had endured. We bought the shampoo and the tablets, but passed on the special dog food upon learning that it was $20 for a miniscule bag. I decided I would be better off cooking up a batch, following the recipe provided by Candice, our organic produce purveyor. Larry first dubbed him Speedy Gonzalez but, when I objected, switched to Leroy (pronounced LEEroy). I have to admit that it fit him admirably, but, wanting to give him something to aspire to, I suggested Felipe. That seems to have stuck, although now and then we relapse and refer to him as Leroy.

Thus began the feeding, the nursing, the befriending. He's a sweet little dog and clearly appreciates my culinary efforts. And he endures the shampoos, the swabbings, and the pills. But on Thursday, apparently feeling a little better, he registered his objections to being confined by breaking out of the kennel (it was missing some screws, so he apparently lifted the top and dismantled the door) and disappeared. It was a stormy day and night, so I was pretty distraught, and we had little hope of finding him or of his returning. Early Friday afternoon, however, there he was back in the garage. Larry decided to leave the door off the kennel and affix him to a long rope so he could ramble around the front yard, and he seemed content with this for about five days. Then he began roaming more freely and consequently became entangled by automobiles, trees, landscape lighting, etc., and we noticed his attempts to chew through the rope. We finally relented and set him free, not knowing what to expect.

He hasn't left the property. The weather has been wet, so he's been happy to hang out in the kennel, fitted with pillows and blankets, for the most part unless a free ranging dog ventures up the driveway, in which case he bares his teeth, charges, and effectively runs him off. When the sun is out, he lounges in the driveway or on the front steps. He's become much less fearful and much more playful, dancing around on his long hind legs for attention and food. Chyna and Trudy are aware that he's there. Chyna objected strongly at first, as did Juanita, who swelled up like a furry blowfish, but the objections appear to have given way to curiosity. I think they'll become used to him, like the dogs did Juanita, and pretty soon will consider him a household fixture rather than a threat. His skin condition has improved, but not quite so dramatically as I had hoped. His treatment was largely antibacterial in the hopes that the loss of hair and inflammation was brought about by scratching, but there remains the possibility that it could be mange, which will require a trip to a licensed veterinarian in David. I'm going to shampoo him again this weekend and give him a good lookover early next week and decide.

The original plan was to rehabilitate him and put him up for adoption, but we finally admitted this morning that we're becoming attached to him and that he's too happy to uproot again. So it looks like we have a third dog. I have hopes that someday Felipe will be presentable if not beautiful.

New and Improved Bureaucracy

Panama's Bureau of Unparalleled Bureaucracy has been working overtime of late. I have a vision of how it operates. Major government functionaries seek out, via a set of confusing questionnaires, the most inept yet creative minor functionaries throughout the country, lock them in a room, provide them with an unlimited supply of marijuana, and refuse to free them until they've come up with new diabolical plan guaranteed to confuse the maximum number of people--particularly those with a less than perfect command of the Spanish language.

While perusing one or more of the many forums (fora?) circulating among the expat population, I came across, a couple of months ago, information indicating that a new law has been enacted requiring owners of motor vehicles to obtain a motor vehicle identification card, a piece of plastic designed to offer proof that one is in compliance with a variety of regulations relating to car ownership and, presumably, to obviate the necessity of emptying the glove box or console of papers relating to vehicle registration, insurance, etc., every time one encounters a traffic stop/check manned by the transitos (traffic police). On the face of it, this sounds like a worthy endeavor as traffic stops invariably result in interminable delays as drivers shuffle through the paperwork, transitos shuffle through the paperwork, and the two struggle with coming to some form of agreement about what the paperwork means. The Bureau of Unparalleled Bureaucracy, however, saw it as an opportunity to produce some of its finest work.

According to the forums, the government had developed a website on which, by entering one's license plate number, one could determine the date on which one's motor vehicle identification card could be retrieved from a specified transito office. Miraculously, this worked. I discovered, back in December or so, that my card would be ready and waiting in February 2010. As this is the month in which the license plate on our principal vehicle is renewed, I figured, somewhat correctly, that the card is linked to license plate renewal. Everything gets hazy after that. (All the information on the forums was confusing and contradictory because, and this will be a surprise to many of you, people cannot write. Information is useful only if it's clear, and people cannot write. I sought clarity via responding with questions, but came away even more confused because people cannot write.)

As if this weren't bad enough, the Bureau of Unparalleled Bureaucracy simultaneously decreed that henceforth one's national identification number must be the same on all governmental documents. This sounds reasonable except that the national i.d. number is tied to the passport number, and, when a passport is renewed, as ours recently were, the number changes. So now the numbers on our cedulas, driver's licenses, vehicle registration, insurance, etc., are different from the numbers on our passports. As best as I could ascertain from the gibberish on the forums, the process by which this is accomplished begins with license plate renewal, after which one sets about getting all the numbers to match before visiting the transito office to claim the ready-and-waiting vehicle identification card. This involves several steps, the order of which remains unclear.

It appears that one first must pay a visit to the Immigration Office, the most hellish place in all of Panama, to get a new cedula (national identification card) with a new number that matches the new passport. I cannot overemphasize what a daunting task this is. The Immigration Office, located in the heart of jam-packed David, provides no parking, has no air-conditioning, offers a tiny waiting room into which are packed dozens of sweaty people vying for attention, and is staffed entirely by non-English speakers. Waiting times of hours or even days are not uncommon unless one goes to the expense of arriving armed with a lawyer or, at the very least, a Spanish-speaking facilitator who is somehow entitled to jump the lines. Once receiving the attention of a sure-to-be surly Immigration bureaucrat, there's bound to be a delay or delays in receiving the actual card bearing the new number, requiring a return trip or trips to David, paid lawyer or facilitator at hand, to once again navigate the bureaucratic quagmire. The next step--again, apparently--is to drive through more traffic congestion to the David City Hall, second floor, to change the motor vehicle registration documents to reflect the new number. It goes without saying that there will be a line of 30 or more persons and that the employee servicing the line that I'm in will close down and go to lunch or on break just as I reach the front. In any case, some paperwork eventually will be accomplished, after which a fee will be assessed. But the fee cannot be paid at City Hall. It can only be paid at Banco Nacional, a few blocks down the 100+ degrees street, after which one returns to City Hall, receipt in hand, to stand in line all over again.

On the other hand, one forum participant reports that she received her vehicle identification card merely by producing her old passport to prove that she is who she purports to be. Either she was very lucky (my guess, all things considered) or the matching numbers requirement is tied to renewal of one's driver's license rather than the renewal of the license plate. This seems unlikely as the card became available at the time the license plate was due to be renewed. I don't know when my driver's license expires. And I don't want to know right now as that presents a whole nother bureaucratic nightmare.

In any event, the license tag had to be renewed, and I know from experience that the first step in that bureaucratic process is to obtain a revisado. The revisado is loosely analogous to a car inspection except that they don't inspect anything. They just check that the vehicle is insured, take a photograph of the car, charge $15, and produce a piece of paper entitling one to pick up the new license tag. A nifty way to pad the federal coffers. There's no place is Boquete that offers revisado services, of course, so I set off for David on Thursday, got the revisado without a hitch, and drove the 25 miles back to Boquete to pick up my new license plate and pay another fee at City Hall. Alas, they had no plates. I was told to return in Marzo (March).

I'm optimistically looking at it as a reprieve as, without the license plate paperwork, I can't take whatever the steps may be toward getting the vehicle identification card. Then I read this morning on a forum that I should have been given a permiso temporal de circulacion (temporary permit to drive around aimlessly) to display in my window to avoid being fined for having an expired tag.

Back to Boquete City Hall Monday morning.

[The photo is of Novey, the offspring of Maisie, one of Steve and Michelle's howler monkeys, fathered by a monkey in the wild.]

Food

We're easing into the dry season, and today was a beautiful, sunlit, tranquil day. I dragged a lounge chair out onto the back lawn and donned a tank top, the first I remember wearing in a long time--so long that it smelled vaguely mildewed. With a new novel (Spooner, by Pete Dexter, is highly recommended) and a coke on ice, I settled in. But not before I had made a breakfast of free-range chicken eggs, sausage, English muffins, and orange marmalade.

I paid dearly for the sausages and muffins, the imported kind, but the eggs and marmalade came from right here in Panama. Putting together one's comestibles (foodstuff) is a constant challenge. I've written about how tough the beef is because cattle eat grass rather than grain and roam freely rather than being stuffed into food lots. No hormones, no antibiotics. It's healthier, for sure, but tough, and not all that tasty for the most part. We've found that buying the filete entero (whole fillet) is the way to go, but costly. Once pushed to the back of the fridge to age for a few days and then cut into portions for freezing, it's very good. Other cuts, however, demand the pressure cooker or the crockpot, and even hamburger needs a bit of bacon grease or lard to make it truly palatable. Pork is okay, so long as one knows which cuts to buy and so long as one can find them, and chicken is plentiful and good. The seafood is spotty, as we don't live on the coast. I've found that fish, for the most part, just isn't as tasty as the fish back in Florida, but the shrimp are outstanding if a bit pricey.

So the search for good, reliable protein is an ongoing. We now have a fish monger, Miguel, who travels to Boquete a couple of times a week and comes to our house with a big ice chest filled with crab, shrimp, fish, lobster, and oysters. This is Pacific seafood, and it's different from what we're used to. The oysters, which measure about four to six inches across, are inedible in our book. The fish, as noted, at times seems tasteless, as does the crab and lobster. Miguel delivers wahoo, dorado, pardo (red snapper), and mahi mahi, but it all tastes pretty much the same: like nothing. It must have to do with the freshness factor, although Miguel swears that he got it at the dock in Pedregal that very morning. So we've pretty much gotten it down to shrimp, tuna, and a sea bass called corvina, which is nearly always good. I'm going to make it my mission in the incoming weeks to locate a reliable source for good beef and pork, starting this morning when I visit Jane and Barry to obtain some of their excellent coffee. They're gourmet cooks and should know. Additionally, Emanuel Revilla-Gonzalez should be there, as he is most Sunday mornings, and should be good for some food sources. In case you've forgotten, he's the President of Banco General in Panama who has a second home just up from Jane and Barry to which he travels by private helicopter from Panama City most weekends. I intend to grill the three of them.

Chiriqui, our province, is known as the bread basket of Panama because of its agriculture. Vegetables and vegetable markets are plentiful, but the downside is that pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides also are plentiful. The beauty of Cerro Punto, an agricultural community on the other side of the volcano, is spoiled by the nauseating smell of pesticides. The incidences of cancer in that region are reputed to be extraordinarily high, and, although we don't detect similar odors around Boquete, anything bought locally is assumed to be heavily treated and therefore best soaked in a water and vinegar solution before eating.

Gringo ingenuity has come into play once again, however. There are now a number of organic farms and small time operators who have emerged to offer hydroponic and organically grown fruits and vegetables. There's a Tuesday morning market at which these fruits and vegetables are hawked, which has grown into the sale of artisan breads, specially prepared meats, herbal products, free-range eggs, Thai cuisine, pastries, organically grown coffee, etc. And a lovely young woman, Candice, originally from California, makes home deliveries of her fruits, vegetables, sauces, marmalades, etc., all organically grown and home-prepared in the Palmira area. We were particularly excited when she began offering greens--mustard, kale, turnips, etc.--and lard. Yes, lard. Look it up: one of the best fats around. She has a blog, too, advising how to cook produce new to us expats. And, at long last, a couple of good bakeries have popped up. There's a French bakery south of town which has excellent baguettes, but it's a 15 or 20 minute drive away. Closer to downtown, a baker from Atlanta has relocated to provide several varieties of bread, cakes, muffins, brownies, pies, etc. But he's expensive: my birthday chocolate cake--the best I've ever eaten, by the way--now costs $26!!! And two Christmas pies, apple and pecan, set me back $25. Ready-made pie crusts are not available here, so I set about learning how to make my own. But my food processor died, and I've been unable to find another of decent quality. (I did manage a blueberry pie for Charly's birthday, but it took me forever to make the crust by hand, and, although it tasted good, it looked like hell.)

Eating out presents its own set of challenges. Restaurants open; restaurants close. Entrepreneurial types figure that, with all the "rich" gringos in Boquete, a fancy restaurant is a sure thing. What they don't figure is that gringos, many of whom live far out of town, don't eat out every day of the week or even several days a week. The tourist trade is good for business, but only if the restaurant is located right in the heart of town, as many tourists don't have cars. So good restaurants come and go. There're plenty of small restaurants that serve cheap, tipico (local Panamanian) food heavy on rice and beans plus poultry or some form of mystery meat, but it's satisfying just once in a while. Moreover, virtually all restaurants are just as apt to be closed as they are open. There are several mainstays--the restaurant at the Panamonte Hotel, the Cafe de la Crepe, El Pianista (an Italian place in our vicinity), the Bistro Boquete in the heart of downtown, and Oasis Restaurante at the hotel of the same name--but they carry gringo prices and therefore are good only for special nights out. No fast food; no hamburger joints; no place to just pick up something quick because service is invariably slow and quality uneven. A meal out requires a real commitment.

So a big chunk of my retired life is given over to issues of food. I cook lunch at least five days a week for me, Larry, and Edwin (and Dalys on Fridays), and no sooner is lunch over than Larry is asking about the dinner menu. Throw in occasional entertaining and a batch of cookies or brownies now and then and I'm in the kitchen an unreasonably large percentage of my time. There is no bigger treat than eating something I didn't have to make myself, but, outside of invitations from friends, it's often not worth the hassle. Oh, for a KFC, a Popeye's, a Boston Market, a McDonald's, a Whataburger. (But then I probably wouldn't be a size 6.)

The Holidays and Beyond

We made it through the wet season unscathed and just were beginning to enjoy full days of sunshine when the cold front plaguing all of you up north created storms in the Caribbean which currently are moving across Panama. We've had high winds and incessant, blowing rain for two days now and are looking at two more days at least. The rain has not been heavy, just unceasing. We're hoping for no repeat of last year's flood. There were landslides in parts of Boquete in early December caused by heavy rains, but we were not personally affected. They hit particularly hard in Valle Escondido (Hidden Valley--the name should give you an idea of what the problem was), a downtown gated community. One reputedly million-dollar house was completely destroyed, and many homes were inundated with mud and water, including that of a dear friend, Pat Mains. She recovered sufficiently to host a Christmas luncheon for fifty people of December 24th. Quite a trooper, particularly since she lives alone and is of retirement age.

In fact, there were quite a few parties to attend this year, and all of them were very fancy by our standards. I remarked to several of you via e-mail that I felt like a British colonialist, what with all the china, crystal, silver, and Panamanian servants scurrying about. The festivities were more low key at our house on Christmas day, but enjoyable nonetheless. Ramon's delightful daughter, Laura, was visiting from San Francisco, and we also were joined by Scott and Vicky, part-time Boquetenos who hail from Houston, and Justin, the new golf manager at Cielo Paraiso, recently arrived from managing a golf course in Mexico. One of the highlights of the holidays was an all-day runabout with Steve. We took off down barely navigable roads, splashed through creeks and waterfalls, gathered plants along the way, got lost, and ended up at the foot of the walking path to the volcano. It was good to able to spend time with him again, as we had lots of news and gossip to catch up on. The picture above is of Steve. (I know you've been wondering what he looks like. Sort of a better looking Steve Erwin, with whom, incidentally, he was mates back in Australia. He has a great story about their transporting some crocodiles together.)

Steve and Michelle returned a few days later to help me host the Garden Club holiday party on December 31st. I use the word "host" loosely as all I did was provide the house. The Club president and her husband set the date and the time, they planned and supervised a number of plant-related games (which were fun even for me, a decidedly no-games person), and members brought all the food. I did provide the paper goods and a fortified punch, but otherwise just sat back and enjoyed everything. Steve even conducted the garden tours. So, all in all, a great holiday season.

Larry is nearing the end of the all the procedures leading up to his getting some new teeth in his head. Following six or seven root canals (I've lost count) and gum surgery which took forever to heal, he spent two four-hour sessions last week having some teeth ground down to accommodate the new ones, which are to be ready in early February. In the meantime, he has temporaries. He had been a champ up to last week, but in addition to having a sore mouth when he came finally came home, he also had a terrific backache from the dentist's chair. And the lousy weather isn't helping his mood any. I'm just trying to stay out of the way.

Juanita Bonita, AKA Kitty Kitty, is now fully integrated into the household: she's joined the two of us and the dogs in bed at night. I used to have approximately one foot of space in a king sized bed--albeit a different one foot at the top at the bottom, obliging me to sleep in all sorts of contorted positions. Now I have virtually none. And no one will give an inch. Chyna somehow morphs into weighing about 200 pounds, Trudy growls if I as much as touch her, and Kitty Kitty gets all huffy if I make her change positions. It takes a good fifteen or twenty minutes to claim sufficient space to get in bed. And, God forbid, if I should have to get up and use the bathroom at night. Animals who wouldn't be moved for love or money earlier in the evening shift around so as to make in impossible for me to reclaim any room whatsoever upon my return to bed. I anticipate urinary tract problems resulting from all of this.

Despite the wind and rain, I'm going to have to gird my loins and make a trek downtown for supplies today. Allegedly, the roads are a mess. And the annual Flower and Coffee Fair is in progress, thus exacerbating the situation. So I better fortify myself with some more excellent Boquete coffee and get cracking.

Varmints in the House

I'd rather write about the Christmas season in Boquete, but since it isn't over yet and there are bound to be even more stories, I'll fulfill my promise to fill you in on the army ants and the snake-in-the-house episodes. For better or worse, Larry wasn't present for either, as most of his waking hours are spent on the golf course. The more I think about it, I believe it was for the better as there was quite enough wrong thinking with just me in charge.

I've known about army ants for a long time. They called them driver ants when we were in Africa, and, although we never encountered them, the stories were legion. The passage of time doubtless has rendered my imperfect memory even more imperfect, but my recollection is that we were led to believe they were merciless devourers of any flesh in their path: sort of land piranhas (not to be confused with land sharks). Fortunately, that myth was dispelled by Doc and Charly, who told us early on that army ants forage primarily for insects and spiders. (It could be that African driver ants are more voracious, which is partly borne out by my research.) They, Doc and Charly, recounted coming upon army ants when they rented a house in Jaramillo. When the ants made it inside, they related, they simply cleared out and returned later to find everything clean as a whistle.

Army ants have been in the back garden several times, and even made it onto the back terrace once when we had lots of workers about. I was startled at the columns of ants up to two-feet wide, but was told by all present that they weren't a danger, just to leave them alone and get out of their way. So I had become somewhat used to them and didn't give any consideration to what I would do if they made their way inside. I should have realized that since we leave the patio doors open when we're home so the dogs can go in an out, it was a distinct possibility that they would pay a inside visit at some point.

Several Fridays ago, when Dalys was here cleaning the house, I ran a few errands downtown and returned to find the entire great room covered by a mass of scurrying ants. They had abandoned their neat columns and spread out everywhere. It's a large room, and the floor was positively boiling and seething with ants. Dalys was cleaning in the master bath and had no knowledge of their intrusion, and I didn't cry out for fear of alerting the dogs, who presumably were asleep in the bedroom. Common sense completely abandoned me, and the first thing I did was close the bedroom door, grab a can of bug spray, and spray the threshold of the open door leading to terrace in an effort to prevent any more from coming inside. This effectively trapped them inside, of course, so I was obliged to try to spray all of them, a nearly impossible task even before the spray can ran dry. I was afraid to open the front door because Juanita was napping on the front porch. Dalys finally emerged from the back and told me, too late, to just leave them alone, they wouldn't bite, and they would be gone within twenty minutes. But now there were dying ants and panic-stricken ants everywhere, with no place to run to, so the two of us set about trying to sweep the dead, the dying, and the panic-stricken into dust pans and out the door. This involved about an hour of frantic labor and, despite Dalys' assurances, a number of bites on my feet when a few became trapped beneath the straps of my sandals. Eventually the house was cleared of ants and order was restored.

Belatedly, I did a little Internet research and learned that they pose little threat to large animals, which generally can get out of the way in any case. But they do bite. And their bites inject a tissue dissolving substance which allows them reduce their prey to jelly so as to be able to consume it easily. That would account for the agonizing itching I suffered on my bitten foot for over a week, even in the absence of discernible bite marks. I further learned that they have no nest but, instead, at times of rest attach to each and form an enormous ant ball, with the queen protected in the center. Interestingly, none made their way up in walls or onto furniture; they confined themselves strictly to the floor. But they are said to climb trees and invade birds nests. I wish I had had my wits about me, had vacated the premises with the dogs and let them have their way with the spiders and other insects lurking throughout the house. Next time I'll be better prepared.

The snake is another story of delayed common sense. I came upon it when I again returned from a trip to town, opened the door, and spotted an intruder curled up in a corner by the front double doors. It's a fairly dark corner, so I'm surprised that I saw it at all and even more surprised that the dogs and Juanita, who were jumping around me in greeting, had not. I don't have a morbid fear of snakes and didn't run screaming through the house, but I'm aware that there are some extremely poisonous snakes in the tropics and that animals seldom ask questions beforehand. So my attention was focused on keeping the animals away from it while I tried to identify it. It was small, only about six to eight inches long, and marked with the ubiquitous brown and black of so many snakes, poisonous and non-poisonous. I was trying to get a look at its head, but the corner was in shadow and I couldn't get too close without alerting the critters to the fact that it was there. I finally called Edwin, who was working out back not far from the house, with the view of his taking charge of the dogs while I threw Juanita out front and then got a close-up look. Edwin strode insidewith his clippers still in his hand and, upon learning what the situation was, casually walked over to the snake, bent down, and decapitated it before I realized what he was doing. If I had been thinking straight, I would have predicted this inasmuch as Panamanians declare virtually every snake to be a fer-de-lance and, regardless of what they are, kill them without hesitation. (Alan Tenant tells a great story about being on a hike with some Panamanians and discovering a rare rat snake. In his excitement over the find, he pointed it out to his companions and was about to explain its importance when one of them chopped it into pieces with his machete before Alan could get a word out.) We hauled the dead snake outside in the sunlight, where I found no evidence of the triangular head common to vipers. I'm not sure what it was even after consulting three reptile books, but I'm pretty sure it was non-poisonous.

A couple of days later Jane was visiting with Christmas cookies and I told her about the incident. She advised that, although fer-de-lances are common in Chiriqui and even in some parts of the Boquete area, we are at an altitude which is out of their range. That sent me back to the Internet, where I discovered several different calculations, but the highest elevation reported for the fer-de-lance was 4265 feet. Jane and Barry's place is at about 4200 feet, and ours at about 4400. So that's one less thing I have to worry about, it seems. We do have eyelash vipers at this altitude, but they mostly hang out in the coffee bushes and other shrubbery and are rarer than the fer-de-lance, which can produce 50 or more young in a brood (or whatever you call a clutch of snakes). I also haven't seen any tarantulas or scorpions here, although Jane reports scorpions at their elevation. Now other spiders--large and small--are quite another matter. They're everywhere.

The varmint pictured above is Juanita Bonita, of whom we both are totally enamored. More on her later.

The Christmas Tree

To begin with, you men can just skip this one unless you have a decidedly nonmasculine interest in the erection and decoration of Christmas trees. Or unless you have a sadistic inclination to find joy in the misfortune of others.

Those of you who have known my Christmas trees of the past know that I have roughly 1,000 ornaments and that, in the best of times, putting my tree together for the holidays involves between 8 and 10 hours of hard work. This year was not the best of times.

Edwin's daughter, Denise, and Dalys's two children, Daisy and Roberto, had communicated an interest in helping with the tree trimming this year, so we set Tuesday, December 8th, for the date. That gave me three days from the culmination of my Spanish classes to get the tree up and string the lights, allowing time for a birthday dinner out on Friday night, the Florida/Alabama game on Saturday afternoon, and a leisurely pace getting ready. It's Larry job to put the tree together and retrieve all the boxes from storage, but he had a golf outing on Saturday morning and was too consumed with the game that afternoon to do more than unload the tree from the box. He put it together Sunday morning, however, and left me to unfurl and fluff out the branches while he alternately watched football on t.v. and punished the lawn practicing his golf swing. After a couple of hours unfurling and fluffing, I set about unwinding the lights and then winding them around the tree. I grew tired after a while and put off the completion of the task until Monday. For once I had allowed myself plenty of time, and my back was aching from all the reaching up and bending down. The golf course is closed on Monday, so I could count on Larry's help with the highest spots.

Monday dawned bright and clear and, after making some preliminary moves toward the preparation of lunch for myself, Larry, and Edwin, I tackled the lights with renewed enthusiasm. Just as I got past the midpoint, however, I realized that I wasn't going to have enough of the little buggers. There were plenty last year, but I had done some branch winding (as all the professional tree trimmers advise) and had overshot my supply of twelve strings. So I dashed downtown with an hour to spare before having to get serious about lunch only to discover that there were no clear, non-blinking lights to be had in the town of Boquete. Distressed, I returned home, completed and ate lunch, and announced that a trip to David that afternoon was unavoidable. Larry deemed such a trip to be foolhardy, so he called Doc/Charly/Ramon to find out if they had any clear, unblinking Christmas tree lights to spare. They offered three strings, only one of which worked. And one of my remaining three strings didn't work.

So it was off for a whirlwind trip to David, which, I found when I arrived, was approximately 110 degrees. Arrocha, the big housewares store where we had purchased lights last year, had the entire back wall filled with shelves of Christmas tree lights, but not one strand of clear lights. I hadn't anticipated this possibility; Panamanians' love of color tends toward the garish, so I figured clear lights would be the last to go. A trip to three other stores in the same shopping complex was similarly fruitless: plenty of colored lights, musical lights, icicle lights, but no small, clear lights. Sweating from every pore in my body, I drove across town, through David's hellish traffic, to a big grocery/hardware/everything store which at first appeared to have NO Christmas items. As I was leaving, however, I stumbled across an aisle with Christmas paraphernalia. (Marketing, like customer service, is not the Panamanian businessman's strong suit. This particular store chain, which carries most everything but in a very hodgepodge way, is owned by the current President of Panama, which gives me pause.) After a lengthy shuffling through of items in complete disarray, I came away with six boxes of clear, unblinking lights. I made my way home on the pot-holed two-laned highway filled with activities of all sorts, showered, and set about finishing up the stringing of the lights before the arrival of the kids the next morning.

There were some moments of anxiety when two-thirds of the tree went dark shortly after completion. Larry came to the rescue, eventually located a bad connection, and set everything right. The morning with the kids is a whole nother story (Daisy dropped and broke the first two ornaments she touched and then got bored; Denise did a fine job except for hiding the best ornaments behind other ornaments or tree limbs; and Roberto, who was attracted to the very small ornaments, placed every one of them within an inch of each other on about one one-hundredth of the tree.) In any event, we were moving right along until, about an hour into the chore, most of the lights went out again. I did my best to find the source of the problem but, with three children underfoot and lots of ornaments already on the tree, it was a hopeless task. The children would have been crushed if I had called the whole thing off, so we continued to decorate; all the while I had the sinking feeling that I probably was going to have to take the whole thing apart, sort out the light problem, and redecorate. I fed them lunch early and took them home as quickly as I could. Time elapsed: roughly 10 hours, not counting the trip to David.

Upon returning, I did, in fact, have to undecorate large parts of the tree, but I eventually found a very hot connection, unplugged it, and replugged a string into another outlet. Most of the lights were restored, but an area of about eight inches around the bottom of the tree was dark. Thus, another 45-minute drive to David, back to the store where I had finally found the clear lights, only to find that there were no more clear lights. Eventually, i.e., after about 30 minutes of shuffling through all the shelves, I found some other clear lights of the LED variety, considerably smaller than the ones already on the tree. Having no other option, however, I bought them and drove the 25 miles or so back to Boquete amid dense pre-holiday traffic, construction vehicles, livestock trucks, dogs and chickens in the road, etc., etc. The lights looked fine, and a complete nervous breakdown on my part narrowly avoided. I rehung ornaments and redistributed those hung by the kids. And the tree is finally up. I figure a total of 18 or more hours were devoted to the endeavor.

I'll write soon about a recent invasion of the house by army ants, as well as about the snake that greeted me inside the front door as I returned from shopping day before yesterday. I know you'll be relieved to hear about some real tropical adventure. But I assure you that neither the ants nor the snake, as alarming as they were, were as stressful as the Christmas tree.

Holiday time

The holidays have begun in earnest. We're in the midst of an onslaught of holidays, there having been four in November already and another tomorrow. Two of the five holidays in November celebrate independence from Spain and from Colombia; one of those is tomorrow, but I can't remember which. In any case, it's a biggie. The fairgrounds as well as property across the street from the fairgrounds have suddenly sprouted huge erector-set-looking structures to support lights and amps, and stages have been under construction throughout town all week. President Martinelli is scheduled to put in an appearance in Boquete tomorrow, I just read, so we can anticipate a full complement of militia to accompany him. Schools let out in early December, to accommodate the coffee-picking season, and then Christmas doings get in full swing. No serious business will be transacted until Carnivale is over in February.

Then we had our own holiday yesterday. I sent Edwin home for the day and set about roasting a turkey, making dressing, putting together a sweet potato casserole from sweet potatoes miraculously found being sold at market from a gringo farm in Santa Marta, and making a blueberry pie from scratch (except the blueberries, which were from a can since they aren't grown here for whatever reason). We shared the bounty with Doc, Charly, and Ramon. Charly brought some green beans cooked with ginger and garlic, and Ramon baked and delivered four loaves of bread. We hadn't seen much of them lately because Doc has been sick with a respiratory infection for eight weeks, so it was a great visit.

Spanish class is winding down, though we've had extra classes (and extra homework) to make up for the days lost to holidays. While I've been studying like crazy, Larry has been playing golf at Cielo Paraiso. Raideep, who loves playing with Larry because their handicaps are close, made him an unbelievable deal on a membership with the understanding that he would be available to play whenever Raideep wants to play which, thus far, has been five or six days a week. (This has to be one of the oddest friendships ever: the wealthy, worldly Canadian businessman of Indian descent who vacations in Hong Kong and the south of France, and good ole redneck Larry.) Between rounds of golf, he (Larry) has had six root canals and gum surgery in preparation for getting some new plates in his mouth. He goes straight from dental surgery to the golf course. This says a lot about the skill of Panamanian dentists and the power of golf. This fulltime golf has improved his temperament immeasurably, as it has mine. Not only does it get him out from underfoot all day; it also has served to silence the relentless sound of t.v. sports.

As I write, Juanita Bonita is tangled in computer cords and is within an inch of strangling herself to death. It's my understanding that some folks have aloof cats. Not my luck.

I read in the Democrat today about the opening of an Old Navy store and am proud to report that a major department store, Conways, whose main store is in Panama City, is within days of opening in David. I know because George and I went to David early this morning to deliver a sofa (which I unwisely had upholstered in white two years ago when we first moved into the house) to be reupholstered in a color more suitable for our lifestyle. After dropping off the sofa and chatting with Juan, the upholsterer, I was eager to get back to Boquete to prepare lunch for myself, Edwin, and Dalys prior to class. But George is not one for traveling as the crow flies or for quickly and efficiently accomplishing one thing when so many other things await his attention reasonably close to the original route. So we dropped by the shop of a t.v. repairman to see about a job for another of George's clients. When the repairman proved not to be there, it necessitated a trip out to Pricesmart, where the repairman also works. Alas, Pricesmart doesn't open until 10:00, but George spent several minutes unsuccessfully trying to gain entrance from a security guard. (Virtually all businesses have a totally unnecessary security guard who spends the day milling around and getting in the way of customers.) We then ventured on to the building department to obtain a plat or plans of some sort for another of George's patrons, encountering the usual bureaucracy and attendent loss of time. Thereafter, we were headed in the general direction of Boquete when I casually mentioned that my Spanish teacher had said Conways was to open today, which precipitated a detour to ascertain the truth or falsity of the assertion. We navigated a parking lot filled with cars and construction vehicles and parked right up front, whereupon George interrogated a number of people before being satisfied that the actual scheduled opening is for December 3rd. Ultimately, we began the trip back, but not without George taking a number of side trips to point out various things he thought would be of interest to me. Upon arriving home, we encountered Steve and Garreth installing a driftwood bench which had been languishing in the garage for months during which time Steve made infrequent trips to see if it was dry, to varnish it, to drill holes in it, to check on it, etc. It is now firmly cemented into the ground, although I was left with the job of painting the mounting apparatus. And that made two more mouths to feed at lunch. Another day in Panama.

The picture is of Larry, Edwin, and Dalys on the day of Edwin's birthday lunch.