Don't Need a Weatherman

Ha!  It rained last night, a torrential tropical downpour that lasted about ten minutes.

This “never happens” in February but it was very welcome.  When the rain stopped, the scent of wet earth drifted through the house and lulled me back to sleep. At 5 AM, it wasn’t too hard.

This morning we had breakfast on the veranda as usual, having one of our wide-ranging discussions like “Whatever happened to quicksand as a danger?” Our youth was rife with people disappearing into, or being dramatically rescued at the last minute from, quicksand, which appeared to be an all-terrain problem.  But now, you never hear of anyone being buried in quicksand.  But then, we wouldn’t, would we?

As this was being hashed out, we watched a piglet race across the garden, formerly never graced with an appearance by the pigs.  Not far behind was the mama, who took a shortcut through the mud flat at the bottom of the garden—it was low tide—to head the piglet off at the pass, all the while honking and bellowing the porcine equivalent of “Get back here this minute, young lady, or I will personally sell you for bacon!”

Then a cow wandered by on the mud flat, as ever searching for food, and Pat took a photo of its food-gathering technique—he reached for a slightly too-high branch that still had leaves on it with his muscular tongue and dragged the whole thing down to his munching level.  I’ve never eaten cow’s tongue, or any other kind, and have no intention of ever doing so, ever—but this made me wonder if cooked tongue is not a very sinewy meat product.

About 1:30 PM fat drops of water were quickly followed by another downpour which was briefer.  The sun was out again before the rain stopped and steam was the outcome, rather than refreshment.

The mongoose flashed by along the periphery of the garden, not at all wet, a very busy animal doing we’re not sure what—scouring the area for snakes, I hope.

If there were sheep here it would be lambing season, but as it is, the area is full of animal babies.  Piglets, of course, also chickens, puppies, kittens, calves, and the cutest of all, a baby water buffalo who looked like a small furry burro.  He was travelling at the end of his herd, who were meandering along the highway for some reason.  No one appeared to be herding them.  I suppose the highway was much easier than meandering cross-country.

I forgot to mention the baby gray dolphins we saw in Sandeep’s boat when we took a trip over to Khola Beach in January.  We struck dolphin paydirt that day, seeing several on the way over and a couple on the way back.

OMG the mongoose just walked right past the front porch as a leisurely pace.  Next he’ll be stopping by with the missus for a gin and tonic at sunset.