Category Archives: Philosophy

Rat Hunter Extraordinaire

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One thing about the tropics is that there are lots and lots of rats.  Lots.  Everywhere.  If there is a fruit tree, there are rats living nearby.  If there is a trashcan, rats live nearby.  Even if you don’t think there are, rats are living nearby.  Same with cockroaches, but that is another story for another day.

The rats not only eat baby turkeys and fruit, they also chew thru everything including putting holes in walls and opening every container in your shed to find out what is inside or even try to chew through your screens.  They poop and pee and make a gross mess wherever they live and they also carry fleas and diseases like Leptospirosis.

rat trapRat Damage
Rat Holes in Old House                                       Rat Holes in Chicken Coop

The common response from many locals on how to deal with this problem is to use poison.  When we first moved here and our abandoned wood house had rats living in the walls I decided I would use some poison on them per this advice.  It turned out to be pretty sad.  The poison makes them sick and when they come out of their hiding spot you are confronted with a sick suffering animal, but I was told at least they don’t die in the walls.  Having poison around our chickens we figure is a bad idea because that is one of OUR sources of food too and I don’t want to eat poison. Plus the rats are pretty smart and will eventually stop eating the poison!

So not only are the poisons toxic and inhumane to the mammals that ingest them ( including dogs, cats, and humans ) many rodenticides present a secondary risk to animals that hunt or scavenge the dead corpses of rats.  The owls and the hawks.   So we decided to keep poison out of our environment as much as possible.

We do have a cat, but he is little use against the rats. He is pretty much afraid of them.  I would be too, they are almost as big as he is.  He does sometimes get the little ones.

Kitty with his mouse
Kitty with his baby rat (or mouse?) kill

After we lost a few baby turkeys to rats however, the war was on.  I purchased a .22 caliber pellet gun (1000 fps) and a few rat traps.  When I was a kid I had a bb gun, so again this is another skill I was able to employ here!  Plus the pellet gun doesn’t fall under firearm restrictions. No license needed, no fuss.  It is accurate from as far as the scope works (40 yards-ish), a better scope would only make things better.  It is not a toy. These pellet guns are the preferred tool for hunting the invasive iguanas…yet another varmint story for another day.

Britton sniping mongooseHunting Mongoose From Upon High

Rats are smart, resourceful and nocturnal which makes them actually fairly difficult to hunt.  Occasionally you will see one out during the day, but it is the mongoose who are usually out during daylight hours stealing our chicken eggs and bothering the turkeys on their nest of eggs (and other birds of Puerto Rico)…yet again another story.

As for the rats however, night hunting makes things more difficult. So I have a head lamp used for spelunking that works great.  It allows me to look around for a target on the ground or in a tree and then I can also use the scope on the rifle to hit the target.  It works really well and is actually kind of interesting in a video game kind of way.  Which was another training as a kid I received;  I played a lot of first person shooters that required scopes and sneaking.

The rats at first were fairly easy to shoot.  This gun is very accurate and very powerful and it is over pretty quickly for the rats.  The pellets usually go in one side and right out the other.  Then the next day I go out to recover them in the daylight.  If you don’t recover them, they stink for a day or two until the ants clean up the scene.

Dead RatHuuuge Rat

After a while the rats tend to catch on to what is happening.  They see a few of their friends get whacked and suddenly their open behavior changes.  They start to hide, they sneak and they become aware that the sounds they make, and their movements attract unwanted attention.  They will also learn how traps work and avoid them.  So multiple techniques need to be employed.  I know I am not going to get rid of all of them, but if they are at least afraid of humans they tend to stay away from our immediate vicinity which is really all I am after.

Britton Gear Palm
Night rat hunting

Chasing down a rat at night in the jungle under the stars and moon watching the visible perfumed pollen move thru the light of the headlamp is actually a fun game.  They will run in the shadows of the tree limbs (on the opposite side) which makes them nearly impossible to shoot….. Unless you make an interesting noise ~squeak~ and they will peak out their head to see what the noise is and THWAP!!  It’s over.

Here’s a little audio of when Cassie came out rat hunting with me one night.

THWAP!

Dead Rat
A night rat’s last night

There have been a lot of interesting scenarios play out, for instance one ran past a rock and I know it was  hiding so I make my ~squeak~ noise while aimed on the edge of the rock.  They will sometimes peek out with their ears at full attention.  THWAP!!! and they fall over backwards with an instant death from a well delivered headshot.

Rat hole hideouts
Rats’ underground hideout below the chicken coop

The ones that don’t die instantly will scream to their friends and at that point it is impossible to find any more for the night.  Their alert to others sends them back into their underground holes so an accurate death shot is important if you want to get multiple kills in a night, plus it is more humane.  They die almost instantly.  Hence the need for a powerful and accurate rifle to put them down quick.

Briton chicken coop rat hunting
They often scurry out of the chicken coop at night

I think many would consider this bizzare, especially if you haven’t lived in the country, but I wanted to share some of the dirtier sides of tropical life.  I choose to look at it as a fun challenge even though I do not enjoy killing things and would prefer not to.

Living here really has helped me to see the cycle of life and death and how everything is connected. We have chickens and turkeys and fruit growing to feed us, but that means food for other animals like the rats. So if we want to keep our chickens, turkeys and fruit, and not get diseases and other unwanted effects from these pests we have to keep the scale tipped to our favor. Here we are an intimate part of nature and the food chain, not excluded. And in reality none of us truly are ever excluded, we just may not see what goes on behind the scenes.

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Half a Page of Scribbled Lines

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I have come to know that I am very motivated by music.  When I start my days I usually listen to music and drink coffee before getting started on whatever project or goal I have set for the day.  One of these tunes that pops up every so often is the song Time by Pink Floyd.

And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

The song to me is about a lifetime and what we may want to accomplish before a our life slips past.  This idea has been important to us in general; we didn’t want our working lives to take up the entirety of our adulthood.  Not that we didn’t enjoy a lot of different aspects of it or that it wasn’t beneficial to us, but we had written down some goals.  Some scribbled lines… and that is what brought us to Puerto Rico.

Every year is getting shorter; never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines

The scribbling of lines has continued!

Before we begin a large undertaking we write stuff down.  We make plans, we figure, we think and we try to create in our minds as accurate of a picture we can of what we want to create.  This is important because we have found out that being as specific as possible helps to manifest our dreams into reality.  We just completed the major part of the bridge and staircase leading up to the cabin and I wanted to show the drawings and the nearly finished product.

Drawing 2Full length bridge
Scribbled out Bridge Plans                                  Actual Bridge

We had even laid out some plans for the staircase on the other side, which we just completed a few days ago.  When I looked back at our idea book it was pretty similar!

Drawing 1Concrete Stairs
Bridge and staircase between Palms                 Actual Bridge and Staircase Different Angle

These were not easy challenges to accomplish.  It required leveraging both human and material resources. I hired some help for digging the footers and making the forms.  We used leftover wood from the wood house for 50% of the bridge and for making all of the concrete forms.  The wood house we took down has turned out to be a tremendous resource!

The concrete steps probably have more time left in them than my body does.

garden path
Path that leads to the Cabin

We continue to put trees and plants in the ground as much as we can because they also will require time.  It can take many years for even a grafted fruit tree to produce and we want to work with time in that regard.  Contrast this with our previous jobs where we felt we were working against time; when is the next vacation, what time do I get off?

Our lives are going to be over at some point regardless of anything, but we get to choose how we spend our time.  If we enjoy something we try to expand upon it and utilize time as one of our resources instead of something to dread and count down the moments until we reach the finish line.  It is also tough because one never knows when their time is going to be over, or when we may not be able to physically do the things we are doing any longer.  Both Cassie’s dad and my mom died earlier than anyone expected.  It has helped us to realize that all of this is fleeting and you’d better get out there and do what you can!

Your time is a personal thing.  Are you using it the way you want to?

And with that;
The time is gone, this song(post) is over
Thought I had something more to say……

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Let Food Be Thy Medicine: A Farm Update

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The finca is coming along great. Now that the air is getting a little cooler, it’s a little easier to be outside working. We are also starting to look more and more the part of a farmer, or I like the word jíbaro, than ever before. Britton finally broke down and bought some steel-toed rubber boots for when he was slipping all over the place building the bridge and then I got some too.

Farmer Jibarita Cassie
Me, the turkeys and my boots -also a huge wild papaya (aka lechosa) and plantains above

They get a little hot and sweaty, but to avoid slipping and all the ants out there, they are great. I still have a tendency to just want to wear my flip-flops, but at least I have some protection if needed.

We are still growing a lot of food:

Bucket of avocadosNew Avocado
Bucket of avocados and starfruit and our “new” avocado

Since August we have eaten avocados EVERY. SINGLE. DAY! Not that I am complaining! I love avos. We even found another tree that is a different variety and super smooth and creamy. So we have a very prolific one that is great for guacamole and a less prolific one that is nice for pretty slices with the eggs in the morning. There are other avocado trees as well, but they are little deep in the jungle. We constantly harvest lots of bananas, coconuts and passionfruit. Occasionally we can reach a breadfruit before it drops, but it’s a super tall tree. Besides all this great healthy food, though, we also grow our “medicine.”

Medicinal plants turmeric ginger garlic
Three of the most important medicines you could have: ginger, turmeric and garlic

The famous quote by Hippocrates is still true today: Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food. What you consume is important to your health! Junk food makes for junky health but on the other side, there are so many great foods out there to help it! In fact, at least 50% of pharmaceuticals were at one point derived from plants!

turmeric plant Ginger plant
Turmeric and ginger growing -notice the small flower on the ginger

Here are some medicinal plants I wouldn’t want to be without:

Turmeric:
This is just an all-time super star. A powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory. It’s used to treat or help with just about everything from heartburn to diabetes! Many diseases are caused by oxidative stress and inflammation, so this root helps on both fronts. What I am most impressed with are the studies showing it could help in preventing, treating, and possibly even curing cancer! I use it any time I cook. It adds a great flavor to meals as well as a yellow color. Some of the oldest people in the world drink a turmeric tea daily. Just be careful as it can stain.

Garlic:
Recently Britton got a splinter in his finger and over the course of a couple of days it swelled up huge! He said it was hurting and beginning to spread. We were just about to the point of going to the pharmacy for some antibiotics, but decided to try garlic first. He ate about two raw cloves a day as well as placed some chopped garlic under a Band-Aid on the splinter area. Within about 4 days, he was completely healed! Garlic is a great antibacterial, anti-microbial, and anti-viral agent in addition to antioxidant and general health tonic. It is also super great for the cardio-vascular system. In addition to the turmeric, I always add garlic to our meals. Cooked is fine, but it’s a little more powerful raw, such as in our guacamole!

Ginger:
I just love the smell and taste of ginger. Another great general health tonic, ginger is probably most well known for helping with stomach aches and nausea. And like turmeric it is also useful for inflammatory issues like arthritis. I often add it to our meals or make a tea or juice mixed with carrots out of it.

Chia:
We aren’t growing this yet, but I would like to because of all the great health benefits, especially to the digestive tract and antioxidants (more even than the powerhouse blueberry). It has the best fatty acids and is super high in fiber. Everyone should eat a spoonful of chia daily or make chia pudding for a refreshing and healthy snack.

Milk Thistle: We grew this in Colorado but I don’t know of a tropical substitute, so I use a supplement for this. I mention it because it is one of the best treatments for a hangover or any type of liver problems or just to maintain a healthy liver. When our young little dog Schnoodle nearly died of jaundice, this saved her life. It was what got me interested in herbal medicine in the first place!

Recently, I have heard of another plant that I was super interested in. It is called Moringa and is often called the Tree of Life.

Moringa2
Moringa sapling ready to be planted

Moringa:
This sounds like the most useful tree ever! You can eat just about every part of it. The leaves can be cooked or eaten like salad greens. The seed pods, called drumsticks, can be cooked as a vegetable. The seeds themselves make a great oil and the root is supposed to taste like horseradish. You can even use it for water purification! In addition to all of these fantastic qualities, it has a ton of health benefits most notably increased vitality in general.

Cabin planting trees
Britton and I planted the moringa and maví trees (as well as a durian) by the cabin

Maví:
I haven’t had the famous Puerto Rican drink, maví, yet, but I’ve heard it’s a little like rootbeer or sarsaparilla in flavor. It’s also supposed to have great health effects including lowering blood pressure. Like cinnamon (another powerhouse mainly for lowering blood sugar/avoiding diabetes), you use the bark of the tree and then make a sort of tea out of it!

I love plants of all types and there is a place here at the farm and in the gardens for them all! From the showy and ornamental to the common fruits and vegetables and all the way to the understated beauty of the medicinals.  They are all welcome here!

Plumeria
Plumeria flower: a beauty and edible too!

Our new lifestyle suits us well. We love being outside in nature and with all the plants and animals. We eat food from the land probably close to 50% of our intake. Some of this food we planted or raised, some were here already and others like papaya just show up as a gift from the wild. We get a lot of movement naturally working and sweating outside and we eat food as medicine. We are much more social and also much more relaxed. Living this way, without really trying we have both lost about 15 pounds more or less (we don’t have a scale, so not exactly sure) and thanks to all of these factors we feel healthier than ever. Yep, I’d say green acres is the life for me!

On the farm with turkeys and a papaya
Tropical farm life is the sweet life!

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Our First Puerto Rican Cockfight

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Yesterday we saw our first official cockfight in Puerto Rico.

Cock fight
Announcement for the tournament

A while ago we had seen an announcement for a torneo de botas de pollo and our friend Papo said he loved cockfights and that we should all go. He said this was a sort of mild version of a cockfight because they put “boots” on their spurs making the fights a little less lethal. This piqued my interest because I sort of already had some opinions about cockfighting without ever seeing it so I wanted to know how close my assumptions were to reality. Having Papo as friend has really opened up a whole different world of Puerto Rico that I’m not sure we would see otherwise.

Cockfighting or pelea de gallo really is THE sport of Puerto Rico. It is also considered a “gentleman’s game” (de caballeros) though there was no problem with women or even children being there (still it was about 30 to 1 male/female). While things are changing a little, judging from the popularity of this event, it is unlikely that this tradition will be leaving the island any time soon.

Pelea de gallos

When we entered the cancha area there was a cacophony of roosters crowing and pounding sounds as people cheered and rooted for their gallo of choice. We noticed two rings. One that was a little larger than the other. There were a lot of roosters but in between, they still had time to play dice.

Topos Dice betsIn between cockfights they played “topos” or dice betting games.

According to Papo, in a botas fight like these, the time limit for fighting is only 3 minutes unlike in a fight with espuelas (spurs) which lasts about 12 minutes or until one of the roosters dies. They keep track of the hits that each of the roosters take in order to determine the winner.

Cock fight
Even with the botas, the roosters were pretty ruthless and needed no encouragement to fight

It was almost like watching a miniature boxing match. When they bring out the roosters they have them “meet” and their neck feathers get all ruffled up. Then they start the clock and they fight non- stop. Not in one match did a rooster back off from the others or run away. Even the roosters in the cages on the ground looked like they were ready to fight. But they were also strangely docile when a human would pick them up. I suppose any bird that started fighting at a human would not last long in this environment.

Having chickens and roosters ourselves I can tell you that roosters do fight and it’s not a hard concept to see where this tradition came from (though our rooster nearly always runs from the other in order to avoid the fight). In the country in times before internet and television it would be something to do. It brings a bit of excitement. There’s people, there’s food, there’s drink, there’s entertainment, there’s gambling.

Scale
The cocks are paired up based on weight using this scale

Britton y comida Puerto Rico food
Britton eating a taco picante and a tiny 8 oz Coors Light

Pinchos con papo
And then there’s what happens to most chickens: food. Pinchos with Papo

I enjoyed looking at all the chickens. There was really one breed of rooster that was preferred over the others. Papo wasn’t sure what it was called. Some of them had single combs, some had rose or buttercup combs but the majority were a reddish color with beautiful orange and green feathering.

Cassie and Rooster
Me with one of the larger birds

I really don’t like seeing animals suffer and “forced” to fight like this, but I can sort of understand it (I don’t think I will ever truly). In Mexico I also went to a bullfight and I felt that that was far more cruel because of the human involvement in invoking pain on those huge bulls. I also know that most roosters are killed (discarded) when they are just baby chicks because they are unwanted in egg production. So in a sense, this “sport” gives them a little longer of a life and possibly a little better care than they would receive otherwise.

Awards
Trophies to the winners

Dead roosters
The losers. Even still with the botas a few of them died and were just tossed out

Watching the cockfight
Up close and personal at a cockfight

I don’t think I would pick up cockfighting as a personal hobby of mine and I certainly felt a little out of place. But I found it extremely interesting from a cultural point of view and I am glad I had the opportunity to see it if only to understand it a little more.

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