on the edge

The Dance of the Garobos

Several day ago while staying at a friend's house, I walked into the guest bedroom to see this. Here in Mexico we have two common lizards, the green Iguanas and the gray/black Garobos. I'm not sure what their actual scientific name is but the locals call them Garobos. They typically inhabit roofs where they can be a pest because they love to burrow underneath the Spanish tiles, disloging them.

I was not sure what these two were doing, but when I went into the room the next day they were still there. They were hanging on the sliding screen door and the only way for me to get out there was by sliding the screen door. When I did that, they stayed exactly where they were and they let me take pictures of them without moving. As I was going back in, I noticed that there was a very tiny, inch long Garobo on the tile floor. Clearly the larger Garobo was giving birth. Was the other Garobo the father? What was his role in this. Do Garobos form matrimonial pairs? Just an interested friend? If anyone who reads this has any knowledge of tropical, coastal, Mexican lizards, I'd love to know more about what what really going on here.

The Spay/Neuter Clinic

The animal rescue group here in Bucerias has existed for a number of years. It was started by a group of women who saw that an excessive numbers of "street animals" needed help. The street animals are usually in pretty bad shape, riddled with worms and skin parasites. They often have skin diseases and are severely malnourished. To add to the problem, they are all un-neutered and the females have endless rounds of puppies and kittens when they themselves do not even have enough food to sustain them. The attempts to deal with them on a one by one basis fall short due to the large numbers of stray animals and the high cost of using local vets. The animal rescue group has been able to rescue some of the animals but the available level of funding has made the job difficult and the possibility of building an animal shelter is far beyond the reach of the available funds.

The Sunday Market

The first time I heard about the weekly Sunday Market in Bucerias, I asked where it was and how to get there. I was told, "Oh, you just drive up the river and you'll see it." I thought that those were pretty strange directions. We have a river that runs through Bucerias, bisecting it into north-south areas. The river is invariably dry with maybe a small rivulet of dirty water running down from the Colonias which have inadequate sewage. So the drill is to get off the highway and drive up the river until you see the tianguis (Market). This Sunday, it wasn't dry; there was a flood of water coming down, so finding a dry parking spot was a little difficult.

The tianguis is on a side street that branches off from the river bed and on most days is indistinguishable from any other street, but on Sunday it's crammed with impromptu booths set up just for the day. The roofs are invariably plastic drop cloths, either the blue or the red kind, set up to give relief from the sun and a shady place to examine the variety of goods offered for sale.