Sunday, May 7, 2017

The Pigeon Shuffle

The Pigeon Shuffle
I woke up in mild terror, realizing I had just heard a really loud thud, and experiencing a second day just after the shock of consciousness. First morning light has just begun, meaning it was about 4:50 am. My first night in a new house, in a new town, in a new country, on a new continent, I was a little sensitive to the sounds I was hearing. The thudding was loud enough that you probably could have convinced me our neighbors were catapulting small dogs over the wall onto our tin roof. It turns out that our local pigeon population isn't very good with the landing gear. Having limited prior acquaintance with pigeons, I cannot say whether ours are frightfully lacking, or whether this is a fault of the pigeon population worldwide. After a series of crash landings, they began practicing the Pigeon Shuffle, which includes scratching, cooing, and lots of fluffing of the feathers.
   
In other news, our house/yard sightings have been fairly tame and include lizards ranging in size from 3-16 inches long, three Guinea fowl who sound like a rusty pump handle, a cat, spiders of various sizes, some mice of substantial size, toads, about 150 small birds who nest nightly in our mango tree, and a child who braved the glass-topped wall on a dare. Oh yeah, and 76,982,910 flies, less the 14 I've killed in my fly trap. That doesn't include the menagerie that awaits just outside my gate.

To accent the Pigeon Shuffle, we seem to have a neighbor cow with both morning and evening intestinal discomfort, and a chorus of roosters unwilling to be outdone by the hoarse cow noises. Occasional it's goat bleets and motorcycle horns accent in just the right places. Throughout days, intermittent knocking on the gate keeps us listening for friends, neighbors, and curious children. Evening noises include a solid hour of chirping by our little birdie friends just preceding a frenzied flutter to claim the best branches for a nighttime roost. Beyond that, a local donkey serenades us most nights with intermittent braying, and the nightly broadcasted soccer matches are just audible as darkness falls. Our neighbor baby chimes I  from time to time as the usual evening cooking sounds clang, mix, and clatter their way into our little yard. Over it all come the sounds of many little voices, gathered to recite from their Book in one of the courtyards just adjacent to our own. Along with our laughter, that about sums up our personal cacophony singing us through the rhythm of our days.