If you’ve ever tried to take a picture of a puppy, you’ll understand this photo viscerally.
No image manipulation involved. We seem to have settled on his name as “Benji,” which was the name of the beautiful but personality-challenged dog we rescued (with permission) from our troglodyte property-squatting neighbors.
Suggestion inspired by our Uruguayan-American friend Isabel, who recalled that I once said all dogs in Uruguay were named Benny, because when owners call them they say ¡vení! (come!), which seems to be a Rioplatense Spanish conjugation. (If you can clarify, please do!)
Last year, we installed a windmill over the hand dug well at our chacra (small farm). I got an upgrade by taking a larger-than-quoted demo unit in place of a brand new one. Hey, why not, these things last a long time. They had to disassemble this unit; win-win. Almost: sometimes when you engage it, something sticks and the tail fin doesn’t go perpendicular to the rotation of the fan blades.
In other words, it does nothing. Which it did the other day.
And the something that sticks is way at the top. Where I have never ventured. But now it’s out of warranty, so up I went the wire ladder, consoling myself that it would at least make an awesome photo op.
Which it didn’t. Oh well.
The more I looked at the mechanism at the top, the less I could understand where the problem lay. Then I looked further up, and saw the tail fin perpendicular to the fan blades. In other words, the mechanism worked. But the windmill didn’t, given the unusual and complete absence of wind. Problem solved? Ya veremos. We will see.
Careful, kitty, the Great Dane has you in the focus of his transmogrification device!
We visited with our country neighbor, Mariana the veterinarian, who boards dogs and took in the lovely dog in the upper right, Benji, whom we rescued from a neighbor’s yard (with their permission; poor thing was on a 5-foot chain and yowling all day long in misery). Unfortunately, Benji has the people skills of a database technician (due apologies, yada yada), and during his last “interview” with an enthusiastic family with kids, walked away from them, curled up under a tree, and went to sleep.
Windmills that work, but don’t; dogs that are lovely, but aren’t. Must be a Zen thing.
I spotted a pile of cut-up license plates at the back of the intendencia (town office) in nearby Salinas. Went to take a photo and realized, wait, there’s a tiny black-and-white puppy in the middle of them, licking up water dripping from an air conditioner overhead. I saw nobody around, but knew there must be. It’s where all the equipment is stored, busy place.
After waiting a long time inside (I cleaned almost all the leaves of the office ficus plant to pass the time), I was able to ask about getting wood chips from their cleanup ops. No estamos chipeando (we are not chipping) was the answer, because it’s too dry, but they took my number and … this is Latin America … I won’t hold my breath for a call from them.
After which I went back by the pile of license plates. No puppy to be seen.
Our vet suggested a different dog food, one with less fat. She says less fat has solved skin problems of many dogs she knows, and ours is having issues.
The guy who sells the dog food displays it outside his house, fading bags in the full sun—who would buy that, knowing full well everything inside would be rancid? Turns out to be just a display. He gets a fresh bag from inside. Then gives me a refrigerator magnet, and say to call next time: he delivers for free, like many merchants here. I like that. I tell him my name’s Douglas, and there aren’t many of us in Uruguay.
