Cats, dogs, birds... and decisions

We're thinking about getting a guard dog. The pros and cons of dog ownership in PNG have been waging a war in my head ever since we started entertaining the idea. During our first term we house/pet-sat for dear friends while they were on furlough. Their collection of animals included an outdoor dog, an indoor dog, and a cat. I decided to post a journal entry I wrote while I was living at their house which has served to remind me what my life is like as an animal owner. Perhaps it will help us make the dog decision...

"I'm not a detective. I don't have good observation skills. I often see clues indicating that abnormal things are occurring in my normally normal world, but my mind refuses to see them as the warning sign God intended them to be. Instead I choose to accept the first ridiculous account that pops into my Sherlock-less head to explain away what I see, and I wind up unawares. When I came home from work Tuesday night a series of events played out that should have warned me my evening would be interesting. Per usual, I ignored all the signs and ended my night stunned. Laughing, but stunned.

To set up the general atmosphere, the bottom of the sky dropped on Tuesday. All afternoon. There had already been almost five inches of rain on Monday, so Tuesday was really just more of the same. The gravel road was treacherous as I plucked my way home, arms gracefully balancing three bags of groceries and a floppy umbrella. I was desperately trying to keep my hair smooth for Bible study, but the weather was obviously against smooth hair so I let go of that lofty ambition. As soon as I entered the house my mood went from cranky to downright irascible. The first thing I saw were tiny paw prints all over the dining room table and the kitchen counter. More often than not I'm able to peacefully submit to the fact that the cat makes adventurous little forays onto furniture when it knows no one is in the house to reprimand him. But on this particular frizzy-haired Tuesday evening, I'd had it with the cat and its blatant disregard for my feelings on the issue. It didn't help that right on the edge of the dining room table, closest to where I consume food, was a tuft of cat hair. This was the first piece of evidence that should have tipped me off to strangeness, but instead of seeing the perfect tuft of hair and thinking, "What could be the cause of this?" I saw the tuft of hair and thought, "Grrrrrrrrr cat." I had just grumped my way to the bathroom to clean the mud off my feet when I heard some thumping noises. As soon as I finished cleaning up, I went back into the kitchen to investigate and found the cat sitting on top of the kitchen counter right next to the stove. It was too much. I snapped. It was unusual for the cat to commit this manner of crime right in front of me, but this second clue went totally unheeded in my rage. There was yelling and lunging (the details are a bit embarrassing, really), but he was too quick and darted downstairs before I was remotely within range. When I next saw him, I decided to communicate my displeasure by hissing at him. The result was fairly satisfactory and I started to feel better.

Even though we are dog people, I developed a special place in my heart for Mic when he watched over me through an illness.

As the evening progressed, the cat continued to act odd in the general area of the kitchen. I chalked it up to him processing my impressive hissing performance and put it out of my head. 

Directly above our stove is a small spice rack containing basic spices, olive oil, and apple cider vinegar. Each level of the rack is narrow and the spices are set up as far to the front as possible, leaving a small space between the spices and the wall. Earlier that day we were given ground cinnamon that I reached up to put away. Before I started shifting spices to make room for the cinnamon, the spice rack fluttered. Spice racks aren't really known for fluttering, so I, of course, immediately panicked. I pride myself for not being a screamer, so I bottled all my panicky emotions inside and took one brave look at the empty space behind the spices. Instead of seeing the wooden rack, I saw a sleek black object, rather long. The scream sitting in my belly jolted as if to come out, but I swallowed it back down. Instead, heart pounding and slightly light-headed, I walked into the living room to calmly ask my husband to check if there was a bird on our spice rack. He laughed at me. And then he looked behind the oregano and saw a dirty black bird.

The rain, the bird, the cat, and the spice rack had created a perfect storm of weird. The bird, finding the weather to be a little too wet, flew into our dry house through the fireplace. Instead of finding a haven of peace, it found a cat. After an epic battle that raged through the living room, dining room, and kitchen (traces of which were found after the bird's discovery), the bird found some solace on the spice rack. For mysterious reasons, the cat had not aggressively pursued its victim while it remained on the spice rack. Once the bird found this effective hiding spot, it thought it would top off all of our days by getting its head stuck behind the jar of apple cider vinegar.

At first, Brian was sure the bird was dead. While he was checking for life, I banished the dog and cat to the basement. After quickly dispatching that duty, I ran back into the living room to be as far from the bird as possible when Brian freed it. Sure enough, the bird was very much alive and started flapping around the house banging into things. Hard. Brian valiantly chased it while I, equally valiantly, ran around yelling choice words trying to avoid the winged monster coming at my head. Eventually, Brian was able to catch the bird in the laundry basket and we freed it with strict instructions to stay away from the chimney.

You have to look close, but the bird's there!

For the next half hour, we frantically bleached the kitchen and did a thorough search of the floors and furniture for feathers and poop. There was an abundance of both. After that, I spent a good portion of the rest of the evening mulling two questions. Why am I a language surveyor, a job that requires impeccable observation skills, when I don't notice the aftermath of a National Geographic battle waged for who-knows-how-long in my own living room? And for what possible reason did the cat not finish off the bird when it was such an easy kill? I don't have an answer for the first question, but I am quite confident that the answer to the second is God's intimate knowledge of me and what I can handle. Coming home to a dead, bloody bird on my stove may have broken me that day. Instead, it was all just a good laugh."

So... guard dog? Sigh. I still don't know.

Waking up to PNG

Our 3 yr old "sister" going into her bush house with a bag on her head. When you think about it... why not?

It was the kind of Saturday morning where I could almost forget that I'm not living in the States. If it weren't for the sweltering heat already baking the house and the buzzing mosquitoes flitting from my calf to my toe to my elbow, I would forget. I was making the bed while Ray puttered around behind me unmaking it; a run of the mill activity for a mom with a 1-year-old. Just as I was coaxing her away from the straightened sheets, we heard a loud bang. I automatically assumed it was a coconut falling on someone's house or car, but then it didn't quite have the resonance of a falling coconut; it was much more explosive. Beyond the sound quality, the bang was immediately followed by shouts, and falling coconuts aren't usually followed by shouts unless someone was silly enough to be under the coconut tree. The noise immediately jerked me out of my state of forgetfulness and landed me right back in PNG. I tried not to think it was gunfire so close to the house, but I couldn't help it. I'm always wondering if the random cracking noises I hear are gunshots. Ray shot down the hallway towards the front door to investigate, saving the bed from further unmaking.

As part of our morning ritual, we always open doors and windows to get the airflow going. I followed Ray to the front door where we could see the activity that accounted for the strange sounds. It turned out to be a truck burning just down the street. So we spent the morning sitting on the floor at our security door watching the fire grow and eventually die. Ray held on to the bars of the door swaying gently back and forth while yelling her signature "bah" to anyone who would listen. Cars drove by, people walked by, and none seemed concerned by the loud explosions occasionally being emitted from the burning metal. No police came, no firefighters contained it. Just a truck burning right next to the main road into town with a small crowd of semi-angry people surrounding it. We still don't know the full details of the event, but we know it was a vengeance burning. Something happened between that crowd of people and the owner of the truck, resulting in the truck's untimely and violent death. We heard rumors from our village family later that it was the Twisties truck. Twisties are a deliciously processed puff of corn covered in greasy flavoring and we have no idea why anyone would want to destroy their truck. The village stories went a little askew in rumor and conjecture once we got past the basic information of the pick-up's identity, but rest assured the people in that crowd felt just cause. 

Situations like this arise every so often reminding me that I'm not in a place I know. Those moments sometimes elicit frustration when my home culture and PNG culture clash in unmet expectations, but occasionally it gives me a thrill. I love to watch the trucks full of people coming into town, legs and arms mixing up with heads and torsos, and then to watch them flow back out again in the evenings. I love to hear the people laughing and singing as they bounce in the back. My morning runs are more entertaining now that they include men hunting for frogs while taking their morning bath in the golf course pond or boys trying (and failing) to shoot fruit bats out of the mango trees with their homemade slingshots. I see the golf course and it takes me back to the States. Then I see the multi-tasking man washing while chasing frogs and I'm plopped right back in PNG. And it makes me happy.