La vida llamó

My Thanksgiving had a near disastrous start. I woke in the morning to discover Houdini had escaped yet again. I checked the yard behind my house, but he wasn’t there. I moved on to where he had previously been attacked by the other turkeys (using the convenient gate in the barbed wire fence), but there was no sign of him there either. There is a bakery on one side of my house where I had found Houdini the preceding afternoon, so I headed there next.

The customer entrance to the bakery faces the same street as my house does. But I was on the backside coming in through the delivery truck entrance. Perhaps as a little side business, the bakery owner has pens of turkeys and chickens in the back, and despite the beating he had already taken, I figured I would find Houdini there again fraternizing with his own kind.

The last time I tracked down Houdini at the bakery there were a lot of people outside, and they helped me locate him. But this time there was no one around, so I proceeded down the long dirt path leading up to the building alone. About half way, a very large hound dog started barking at me.

Guatemalan dogs bark. The streets are littered with them. They bark, and they growl, and they act tough until you raise an arm like you are going to throw a rock at them, and then they dart away whimpering. And I like dogs (granted the ones here have done a lot to erode that affection). So in the face of an angry looking, growling, and barking hound dog, I continued walking down the path in search of Houdini.

The dog was a good distance away, close to the building, and I assumed, from past experience, that as I drew nearer to him, he would simply start backing up and run away. But we all know what assuming does, and the irony is that is one of the places I was eventually bitten.

By the time I realized that this hound dog was not your everyday Guatemalan chucho, it was already too late. He started at a full sprint and pounced on me. I had just enough time to block my face with my arms. Satan (after the attack I christened this name for him) knocked me back with his force and bit my hand. But I did not go down. I turned, and I bolted.

I think just to make more of a game out of it, Satan purposely gave me a head start. I thought I was to safety when he suddenly surged from behind and bit me in the butt. He ripped my pants, and I kept running. I ran until I finally reached the street, and he stopped pursuing me. Apparently Satan is a guard dog, and a pretty damn good one at that. Once I was out of his territory, he left me in peace.

Now I am not usually a screamer, but this hound dog that was half my size put my vocal chords to work. A couple of the bakery employees heard my cries of distress and came outside. I was too scared to set foot back into Satan’s domain, so I yelled at them from the street to check and see if my turkey was there. He wasn’t. I got bit in the behind, and I lost Thanksgiving dinner.

Disheartened and disheveled, I headed home. My adrenaline rush was starting to wear off, and I thought to check my wounds. Satan chomped down but didn’t tear, and fortunately he didn’t break the skin. So as I made my way back to my house, I thought even though we won’t be having turkey for Thanksgiving, and even though a dog did just attack me, at least I was not bleeding. I was thankful not to be bleeding. I was thankful not to have to make an emergency trip to the capital to get rabies shots and miss our turkeyless Thanksgiving entirely.

But when I got home I found Houdini eating tortillas on the porch. After a rough start, Thanksgiving was looking up…