Also Ordinary Life

 Recognizing that most of my blogs are glowing accounts of what we find here, this one shows a bit of the less shiny side of life, evident here as everywhere.  There were specifically three things yesterday that brought out this realization.

The first, and the only one for which I took a picture, is roadkill of a little hedgehog.  Mostly what I have seen squashed on the pavement are rodents -- medium size and the other day there was a blond cat.  But this little guy reminded me that fast cars, though they may be small, are deadly to little creatures.  And a danger to big creatures.  I wear my high vis bright coral shirt when riding.  In fact, I bought a second shirt like it at Decathlon at the beginning of our trip.  The cars are considerate of cyclists, but being seen always improves the odds.

The second was a parade.  In a normal year, yesterday should have been the day for the children's Carnaval parade, but as mentioned previously, the big gatherings are not happening this year.  The parade I saw yesterday, was a small one.  It was in a small town on the north shore that I cycled through to reach the Observatory.  The highschool-aged young men were all dressed in camo fatigues and some were masked with gruesome zombie masks.  They were singing and also dragging along some iron pieces.  One greeted me politely, but the atmosphere of that parade was certainly not the fun-filled exhibition of the children's parade that we have seen in other years.

The third was the bellowing of a cow.  She was not just mooing for fun, this was distress and when I was riding up the mountain, I heard the sound and saw the vet truck in the field, I figured she was giving birth.  Sure enough, she was lying on the ground, tied very tightly at the head to a post and being attended to by some guys and a young lady in PPE with bloody gloves which reached past her elbows.  But beside her back legs lay a wet black lump which didn't move.  Cows are very important on this island and they all have at least two tags in their ears, so it is evident they are extremely well cared for, but tragedies still happen.

Look carefully in the middle of the picture.  You will see the usual way to graze young steers -- cow circles!