PETS

 PETS

The green of my garden is a pleasure to see...

It's pure meekness...

From the valley of the door of my tapera to...

There, close to the riverside...

But there's a fat grass tar (hi there)

Which is damned bad... plague to grow...

I've never seen it like this...

And in this fat grass tar (hi there)

There's a price for mi réis...

Each toceirão ... has more than ten ....

(Luiz Carlos Vines)

Every time I hear an ambulance passing by on the avenue, I feel nostalgic for my childhood... calm down, it's not the ambulance that reminds me of the past... it's the sound of its siren. Huh? Like this?! I'm gonna explain...

I was about ten years old, more or less (I think a little less) when my cousin gave me, as a present, a couple of cavies. They were two very pretty little animals... oh, for those who don't know what a guinea pig is... it's what some people call a guinea pig. They are very cute and tame. And their maintenance is cheap... they love fat grass... and as this grass is rich in water, the little animals end up eating only the leaves and hardly ever drink pure water. Well, as I said, I got a couple of little preys... the male had a full black coat, and the female was piebald, with white, brown and black. She was very beautiful... of course they got a name. It was Zico and Zita. But in the end, only the two of them had a name. is that the family grew very quickly. In six months the first couple generated almost one hundred descendants, direct and indirect. And how they ate.... every day in the morning and in the afternoon I would go to the dam to get food for the little animals...

The little house accumulated dirt, which was beautiful... I had to clean it twice a day. but, as I said, the little animals were docile, so I took them out of the kennel and let them loose, while I sanitized their "residence". I had to wash the house every day. but it was a nice job to do...

In the morning, when I woke up, that sound that today we hear only in ambulance sirens would quickly get me out of bed. It was the little animals that were asking for his breakfast. After I'd cleaned their house and given them new fodder, they'd be quiet until they'd consumed all they'd earned and asked for more again. Well, during this break I went to school, then I went to play with the street children, catch cicadas, watch the baby birds make their burrows, hear the birds sing in the trees... the daily routine...

One thing I never allowed was anyone trying to eat my pets. Of course, there's always an exception, and that one came in the form of my aunt...she came to visit us and upon seeing my cavy breeding, she asked to have one. I protested as much as I could, but one of the pets ended up being sacrificed to fulfill my aunt's wish. But it was the one and only. I never let anyone touch them again... and everyone was looking greedily at my pets, because they were chubby...

While I kept my cavy breeding I didn't have any other pets. As a matter of fact, my father wasn't very fond of animals in the house... cats were forbidden. But not just in my house, in the whole village. When the mating season for these animals arrived, a true pussy hunting season was opened. All the men in the village had cartridge belts and when the cat hunting season arrived, everyone used them without any shame. Yes, there were nights when ten, fifteen cats were shot by hunters. These displayed their trophies and then discarded them, throwing them into the woods. The only purpose of the hunt was to end the catfish. Fortunately, this practice was abolished a long time ago. I just adore cats. But while my father was alive, I could never have one. He simply disliked these animals. Dogs, he even accepted. For a while. Then, in a beautiful day, he decided that we should get rid of the animal. And we had to get rid of it, it wasn't an option...

Well, I had a few pets as a kid after all. Some dogs that all of a sudden had to be shipped somewhere, otherwise they would be put down, chicks that became beautiful chickens, a sow... this one wasn't exactly mine, it was my little brother's, but I just adored her. .. it ended up becoming a ham for Christmas... but that's another story...

today I have two cats that live at home... in other times, it would not have been possible to keep them. But it's like I said... people's mentality has changed and no one goes out gun in hand to hunt these little animals anymore. Well, it wasn't cats and other animals I was talking about... it was cavies...

There came a time when it became impractical to keep animals at home. They had increased a lot and would certainly increase even more... so, with a lot of pain in my heart, I started donating the little animals to whoever wanted it. I donated everyone, except Zico and Zita. In time, they died. But every time I hear the siren of an ambulance rushing down the avenue, I remember my pretty little hands....

It's seven hours and fifty minutes into this cloudy Monday, with the thermometers showing 21ºC, although the feeling is of much colder weather...

Stay with God and see you tomorrow, if He allows it. And may this be the best Monday we've ever had in our lives...