Category Archives: Pets and Animals

Our First Sales at a Pulguero!

We have been thinking about downsizing our turkey flock now for a while. We really only need one or two toms around to fertilize the girls. The boys tend to fight a lot with each other and a chorus of four gobblers can be a bit much when an airplane flies overhead for instance. (I imagine them thinking HOLY GOBBLE THAT’S A BIG GOBBLE HAWK GOBBLE GOOBLE.)

Turkey trail
These guys are so funny and follow us everywhere

Then we had the mama come out of the jungle with 13!! babies and we knew for sure. We could harvest them for food but it’s pretty time intensive and difficult since we don’t have an operational full-sized fridge. So I listed them on a Facebook sale page as well as Clasificadosonline. Within a week we had sold 2 adult females (hembras), a male (macho) and 3 babies (pavitos) with 3 others sold on hold. Even with keeping some for ourselves, we still had more to sell though! So a friend reminded us of the San Sebastian flea market AKA Pulguero which is especially known for all the plants and animals.


When we visited the San Sebastian Pulguero years ago. Not much different today!

This market is one of the largest on the west side of the island and is open from late Thursday until late Friday (like midnight late from what I understand). It hasn’t changed much since we visited it when we were here on vacation years ago. But it is sort of funny how we have changed from the customer looky-loo that we were to being the supplier. I think of it almost like when we visited we were viewers of the movie that is Puerto Rico and now we are players/actors in the show.

Loading turkeys
Getting everyone loaded up for their first drive!

Anyhow…we weren’t sure what to expect since we don’t have the permisos to be vendors there. But our friend assured us that if we just sold them out of our truck we’d be fine. He even lent us some cages for the birds. So Friday morning we loaded up a pareja (pair) as well as 5 pavitos. We really don’t need to sell any more females, but some people want to buy them together to start their own little flock so she came along as the other side of the pair.

When we arrived at the Pulguero we weren’t sure what to do. So I asked Britton if he’d rather stay with the birds and the truck or do the walk through and see what we could find out. He said he’d stay. I walked through the whole winding path and saw many interesting things. Then I saw a guy who was selling turkeys and thought maybe we could sell wholesale to him. We talked for a while (in Spanish) and he said he didn’t have space for the adults, but I got the feeling I could talk him into buying the pavitos. By the time I returned back to the truck to tell Britton, he was gone. And so was one of our big boys!

I waited for a while and when he returned he said he sold our macho only about 5 minutes after I left -in his broken Spanish no less! ¡Buen trabajo! And that it was a good thing he did because the security guard came up shortly thereafter and said that people are only allowed to sell out of their vehicles in the parking lot until about 10am and it was by then about 1pm. Well, we still had our hembra and the 5 pavitos. Should we just go back home? I told Britton about the man with the turkey stall and so we decided to take the pavitos to him…hey we’re not selling them in the parking lot right?! 😉

Selling Pavitos
Britton carrying the pavitos through the pulguero

We got to the guy and he kept regateando to the point that we just went across to another bird stall where an old-school guy thumped the cage to make sure they all could stand and then bought them right then and there! Not too bad for our first pulguero! And little pava got to ride back with us and join her friends.

On our way home we were hungry and stopped at this place that I thought was sort of charming and funny. Stuffed hamburgers and coffee….hmm interesting combination.

Hamburgers and coffee
The House of the Stuffed Hamburger

I’m so glad we did. They made super good, inexpensive coffee and Britton was really happy with his hand stuffed hamburger. Hamburgers are one of his favorite foods, but we try to avoid any corporate crap fast food and we want to support local businesses that truly invest in and with Puerto Rico. So this was a great find and cost less than a chain anyway! We talked with the owner a bit and he said he is thinking of opening a shop in Rincón because business is better there. Please do!

Cafe
Yummy latte

Hamburger and Salad

Hey, are you calling me a pig? A piggy ketchup design with burger and plantain fries and a  delicious fresh goumet salad! 

A fun productive day out and about in San Sebastian!

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This Little Piggy Visits Our House

“Snort, snort, grunt!”

We heard this strange noise and the turkeys getting a little agitated making their bubble pop noises, so we peeked out the window and up comes trotting this friendly little pig right up to our doorstep.

Pig

So I grabbed the camera and this is what ensued.

It is so funny that in addition to all the wild creatures we have around like the birds, iguanas, geckos, turtles, hermit crabs, not to mention dogs and cats we also have the occasional farm animal (cow, pig, horse) stop by and visit our turkeys and chickens!

Pig at the gate
Let me in, let me in, by the hair of my chinny chin chin!

This pig was smart and obviously had been around humans before as he followed us right up and out the gate. Britton was watching him at the gate when our neighbor drove by and he said it was his pig and it must have jumped the wall of his cage. He and Britton attempted a conversation in Spanish (Britton’s still learning) and then the neighbor offered for us to buy the pig! We’re not quite ready for that just yet. Maybe down the line. He sure was cute though and didn’t want to leave!

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Wild Hermit Crabs in Puerto Rico

After a good rain we tend to see a lot of wild hermit crabs out and about. They are so cool. I want to learn more about them. Like, where do they find their shells? Some must be from the sea, but what a long way to travel when you’re that small! Some of them pick the most beautiful homes! Some are more reticent than others who like to pinch me when I pick them up. I just can’t help but want to look into their little home and at their weird pokey eyes, hard red crab legs and quivering antennae.

Hermit Carb
This guy was just not afraid of me at all!

One day I went out and saw two scrambling around right outside the cabana door. So the turkeys, chickens and I went to inspect them amidst the fallen mangos. In this video you get a sense of the scale of these hermit crabs in relation to the turkeys who look like huge dinosaurs tromping around. One of them looked just a like a rock moving around. What a strange and wondrous life it is to live in our own little nature show.

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Zika in Puerto Rico

Zika, Zika, Zika! Everyone’s talking about Zika! As you can imagine, in Puerto Rico it has been a huge topic of conversation lately. As the latest “new” mosquito-borne virus/disease there has been a lot of worry, alarm and confusion. Puerto Rico is the first place in the U.S. to face the full force of this virus. Unlike in the north where they can just simply say “avoid areas with Zika” when we live here, we are much more aware. Currently, about 700 people in PR have been confirmed with Zika and those numbers continue to grow. But what does that mean? Let’s first go over what Zika is and isn’t.

aedes
Aedes mosquitoes are large, slow and striped

Zika is a mosquito-borne virus carried by the Aedes mosquito -the same ones that carry dengue, chikungunya, and yellow fever. They are larger mosquitoes with tiger striping. They like to hide out in houses, under beds and in cabinets. Their eggs can withstand long periods of dryness and hatch in as little as a thimbleful of water. They don’t fly far, but travel widely mainly because of the movement of humans and other blood meals. Because of these factors, completely eradicating mosquitoes especially in the wet tropics can be very difficult, if not impossible. The Zika virus can also spread sexually for the approximately 10 days that it is active in the body.

The illness of Zika is actually overall much, much milder than most of the other mosquito-borne illnesses. When Britton had chikungunya/dengue (still not sure which), it laid him out flat for a week! Zika, on the other hand, is almost entirely asymptomatic meaning most people will not even know that they had Zika! Those who do get Zika symptoms have very mild symptoms such as a mild flu. Very few people, in fact much fewer than from the flu, are expected to die from Zika illness.

The main concerns for Zika are Guillain-Barré which is rare and temporarily debilitating but in most cases people will recover and microcephaly in infants born to mothers who had Zika during pregnancy. Microcephaly is basically a shrunken head/brain deformity that can cause all sorts of serious problems in the baby including seizures, vision loss, inability to walk, and other developmental abnormalities. In the general population this occurs in about 2-12 out of 10,000 births.

zika-virus-and-microcephaly-4-638

The increased number of microcephaly births in Zika exposed pregnant women, including the exact rate, is still not exactly known. Nor, is much else about it for that matter. All that is known is that there is an increased risk. Most reports show, however, that the increased numbers of microcephaly were dramatically overstated in Brazil and that of those that were accurate nearly all of the women had experienced the classic Zika symptom of a rash on the face and red eyes. Since only about 20% of people who are infected will experience any symptoms at all, the likelihood of a microcephaly birth is still very low.

The other factor to remember is that once people have been exposed to Zika, including women of childbearing years, we then have immunity! It is only during this short window of time while it spreads, perhaps a year, that we are immunologically naïve and will have this risk. Because it is already spreading so rapidly, it is estimated that 80% or more of people in Puerto Rico will have been exposed (and therefore granted future immunity) to Zika. It is estimated that at least 20-25% will have been exposed before this current year (2016) is out.

My Thoughts on Zika
To me, given all of this information about Zika, which is still frankly not much (I would like to know the exact expected rates of births with microcephaly in infected and symptomatic mothers for instance), I would say that the majority of the population doesn’t need to worry much at all! Zika is a very mild disease and most people won’t even know that they had it. And trying to fight off all the mosquitoes is a losing battle. Even in the states, West Nile Virus spread like wild fire and infected tens of thousands of people. Even though mosquitoes there are really only an issue for about 3 months out of the year and most people have screens and air conditioning, it still spread! It is nearly impossible to be completely locked away from mosquitoes, and many call the fight against mosquitoes (especially the aedes mosquitos) a lost cause.

In fact since it is estimated that most of us will get Zika anyway, I’d rather get my immunity early rather than delay it further and that way I won’t have to worry as much about questionable chemical municipal sprays, GMO mosquitoes, larvacide in the waterways and freaking out about mosquitoes (though I am certainly no fan of the little blood-suckers and have tried all I can to keep them away, given how much they love me I probably already have it).

Since the biggest issue with Zika is the increased risk of microcephaly, the group of people who I would be most concerned about are women who could become pregnant, are thinking of becoming pregnant or who are currently pregnant. For that reason some groups are recommending the delay of pregnancy until after the wet summer season (when presumably we’ll all get the chance at Zika immunity). Even still, while it is an increased risk, most babies born to women who were exposed to Zika during pregnancy will be normal.

I hope this summary of information on Zika that I have been reading up on has been helpful. In the meantime, I will be eating a lot more garlic to ward off these vampires and keep my cardiovascular/immune system strong to fight off any virus. ¡Salud!

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