The nest

I’ve been walking with Syd in the VillAr wilderness* for a few years now, and know my way around. But I don’t have the paths mapped in my head the way he does, partly because he’s been walking there so much longer, and (muchly) because he’s the “Cruise Director” so that, like a passenger in a car (my wife marvels at my ability to navigate Montevideo!), I don’t have to pay particular attention: just along for the ride/walk.

Syd and Gundy have been in Buenos Aires for a couple weeks. Their house/pet sitters apparently saw little benefit in my accompanying them on dog walks (which shocks me; I find my company scintillating — but alas, perhaps therein lies the problem), and adopted no apparent (or at least shared) schedule. So today I took Mocha at 1:00 PM, (an unheard-of hour) so as not to run into them, and we wandered here and there for well over an hour. Several times I walked 50+ meters “the wrong way” down a trail, to see if I was where I thought I was: mapping. Sometimes I was right; sometimes wrong.

Philosophical outtake: when I was 14, I didn’t really perceive my evident cluelessness; things just sometimes worked, and sometimes didn’t. 50 years later, I find my cluelessness amusing – or at least, interesting. Sometimes I know where I am; sometimes not. It’s all good.

Along the way noticed details I might not have otherwise, like this:

The top hole is obviously a birds’ nest. What kind? Owl? Active? Not? I approached, but it was above eye level. Do owls burrow into tree stumps? What other bird might? In late October (equivalent of late April northern hemisphere), would this be an active nest?

Were I a National Geographic photographer, I might camp out here six hours – or six days, or six weeks – for answers. As it was, when Mocha crunched nearby returning from a thorough sniff-sniff of the area, we moved on. I will try to remember when we pass by again.

* about 150 hectares/370 acres of mostly no-man’s land in Vila Argentina Norte

An even more amazing rabbit chase

It was the most amazing rabbit chase to date. And seeing as we’ve had a rabbit bounce off our legs and escape at a 90° angle (honest!), that’s saying something.

We were in an open area, with woods about 50 meters ahead, when suddenly one of the dogs burst out of the woods, chasing a young rabbit straight down the path towards us. Had the dog been Benji or Jordan, the rabbit would already be dead, but the dog chasing it wasn’t one of the faster ones.

And the little rabbit wasn’t fast at all.

jackrabbit — From Pinterest, source unknown

Syd and I immediately stood on the path in the way of the dog and shouted. No time to think, but with the other dogs behind us, in a completely open area, the little rabbit was seconds away from being torn to shreds.

But then something amazing happened.

We didn’t scare the dog, which continued running. But the rabbit abruptly turned around and ran (as fast as it could, but not real fast) straight back on the trail it had just come down, into the woods. All by itself.

Dogs? No, they were running furiously in the opposite direction. They made a wide arc onto the sand road nearby and reversed direction, and it looked like they still had a good chance to intercept the rabbit.

And then they were running everywhere – could the rabbit possibly escape?

Yes.

Which gave an amazing chase a particularly happy ending.

The amazing rabbit chase

It was over in seconds.

We were walking in an area of shrubs, dogs lingering behind. Suddenly a YIP! from Jordie, and I swing around to see him flushing a rabbit to the right across the path behind us. But there’s Kiya, and the rabbit abruptly turns right, on the path, toward us, Kiya barely a length behind. Not good. I instinctively place my feet wide on the path, to force the dog to detour, if only for a split second.

BAM! The rabbit bounces off the inside of my right leg. I spin my head around. Syd has turned halfway around to the right and BAM! it bounces off the outside of his right leg. This carom serves to change its course 90 degrees, and instantly it’s gone into the brush.

And then even more amazing — the five “chaser” dogs completely miss it, and go charging up the path ahead. Only Leah, the princess who prefers watching chases to participating in them, spots the rabbit’s real path, and takes off into the bushes after it. Seconds later it’s obvious the rabbit has escaped, which comes (happily) as no surprise.

And then the other dogs, who had chased ahead on the path, reappear from behind. Go figure.

Running Hare Drawing by Malcolm Tait, Saatchi Art (click for source)

Syd has recounted several times the occasion when a flushed rabbit ran out of the bushes and through his legs, but never before contact, much less such a perfectly set up carom that the rabbit-hunting dogs completely missed.

During our time walking dogs together, there have been two kills, bring the total over all the years Syd has walked there to maybe seven. The first occurred at the end of the walk. A young rabbit bolted when five dogs were within a few meters, and didn’t stand a chance. Benji proudly came away with fresh blood on his back, having rolled on it. The second, recently, involved a longer chase, from which all of the dogs returned except Benji. Finally he emerged from the bushes with a dead rabbit in his mouth (no way of knowing who actually caught it). My immediate feeling was that I was looking at a classical painting.

I don’t recall having seen one, so I set out to look, and found this.

Sir Edwin Landseer: The Champion painting — Sir Edwin Landseer — interesting guy: click for story

But that dog, except for its size, looks surprisingly like Leah, the non-rabbit-hunter. Go figure.

Dog walk observations

A snake. Of the dogs, only Benji paid attention. When the snake adopted what looked like a striking position, we were both yelling at him to leave it alone.

He did, and it continued on its way off the path.

Recent winds turned the sand “roads” into recording media.

We stare at them, perplexed. We did settle on one type of track (not shown here) being caused by a beetle. But these remain mysterious.

And this must (?) be from a lizard, probably 20-30 cm long.

Return of the swimming hole

I took this photo two days ago. We had been avoiding this route for several days because the water level had gotten so low that it only invited the dogs to get filthy. But my neighbor — who has a swimming pool — estimated earlier that we had gotten 1.5″ of rain in the early morning storm. Naturally Syd and I were curious to see how that translated in the doggy swimming hole.

dog swimming hole, Villa Argentina, Uruguay

Just wonderfully, it turns out! Plenty of room to splash around, lie down, or sit for a few seconds, looking goofy, before chasing each other around or digging holes (an activity frowned upon at home).

Now I can only wonder how deep will this get when we have continued rain? Stay tuned.

The ‘house’ in the ‘woods’

Beautiful weather the last few days, but I’m on dog-walking hiatus because he managed to slice open his foot on one of the multiple garbage dumps where we walk with Syd’s five dogs.

So this photo is from a few days ago.

According to Syd, someone spent a winter in this structure. It was intact when first I saw it.

Other trash sites include old furniture, TVs, and just about anything else you can imagine, including many things that could have been put in trash receptacles nearby.

trash pile locations, Villa Argentina norte, Uruguay

Blue dots represent trash locations; Syd probably knows more. Light blue area is generally littered. And yes, there is a pile of broken TVs and other appliances just meters from the streets that have trash receptacles, and no, not all the trash predates the receptacles.

You may recall the dog we found and the mess its owner couldn’t be bothered to clean up.

An Uruguayan friend in nearby Parque del Plata told me that he and his wife spent a considerable amount of time cleaning up the corner lot opposite them, where neighbors left their trash, when the trash containers arrived. (OBTW there was trash pickup before the containers.) Shortly after, he watched a man in his 50s walk past the trash container to dump his trash in the open lot. When confronted, the guy said, this is the way I’ve done it all my life. He was eventually trained out of that habit. It took about a year.