We are house, dog and cat sitting for a week at our neighbors. Every morning, we take Scruffy the dog and Barney the cat for their morning constitutional walks here in Vista Atenas, Atenas, Costa Rica.
Here is a video I made of one of our morning walks.
For those who may not know, a few years ago a little dog, now known as Scruffy, appeared on our road. He had no collar, seemed lost and disoriented and was lame. He was wary and hard to approach. He roamed around our neighborhood looking for food. Neighbors started feeding him and he became more trusting.
Eventually, he decided to adopt our neighbors Rose Mary and Tony as his guardians. They had him neutered, checked out by a vet, had vaccinations, worming, etc., and took him into their home. He now sports his own blue collar with ID tag and Rose Mary keeps him supplied with a variety of jaunty neck scarves.
If Rose Mary and Tony are away from their home, Scruffy comes down the road to stay with us. He just wanders in and lies down on the dog bed we provide for him or sometimes he goes and sleeps under our bed.
Today, he decided to spend some time with us. Here are Scruffy Friday photos to enjoy.
St. Patrick's Day is not a Costa Rican celebration but North Americans who live here usually try to mark the occasion. This year, we were fortunate to be invited to Jean and Bill's bash and everyone had a great time. There was Irish music, the weather was of course fantastic, and there was food galore. Thanks very much, Jean and Bill.
I'll post a few photos of the occasion but, first, Scruffy has something he wants to say:
For those who may not know, Scruffy appeared on our road one day a few years ago - collarless, confused, lame and apparently abandoned. He eventually decided to adopt our neighbors Rose Mary and Tony as his new guardians. They had him neutered and checked by the vet. Now he is famous in Costa Rica and elsewhere. Rose Mary supplies him with colorful bandanas to wear and here he is in his St. Patrick's Day best. He's a small dog with some obvious terrier background.
Here are the other photos.
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| A big welcome. |
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| Of course Scruffy had to be there. |
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| There were games to play. |
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| View towards Atenas, partially obscured by smoke from a fire on a nearby mountain ridge. |
It's a red, white and blue day today in Costa Rica as the Netherlands faces the mighty Costa Rica futbol (soccer) team. In our town of Atenas, flags and banners are everywhere. Taxis are driving around with flags waving from them. People are dressed in Costa Rica t-shirts and the anticipation is palpable. Banco de Costa Rica has a big screen TV with the soccer games on so we can wait for our turn at the teller without missing anything. Everyone is very proud of how far this little country has come in the World Cup.
Even Scruffy is wearing his Costa Rican colors. His colors were also appropriate for Canada Day (July 1st), minus the blue. The Canadian flag is red and white.
Scruffy was also dressed appropriately for yesterday's American 4th of July celebrations.
Baron's Resort, #59 Vista Atenas, very kindly hosted a 4th of July BBQ. Guests brought a dish and Baron's provided the BBQ'd hamburgers, hotdogs and condiments. We had a great time, meeting old and new friends and enjoying all the food offerings. Thank you, Jerry. The setting is fantastic with amazing views.
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| Just one of the almost 360 degree views from Baron's Resort. |
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| The glassed in pavilion. |
Baron's Resort is in the same area we live in (Vista Atenas).
I decided to make red, white and blue strawberries to bring to the BBQ. Neighbor Rose Mary kindly drove me to the new AutoMercado on the Autopista (highway 27). White baking chocolate was nowhere to be found in Atenas but I found two packages at the AutoMercado. Strawberries were no problem ... they are so plentiful in Atenas. I bought 6 pints from the berry vender at 1 mil for 3 pints ($2.00). They were large and ripe.
The plan was to dip a red berry in melted white chocolate, then dip the bottom third in blue sugar. Cool, no? Well, the white chocolate package directions said I could melt it in the microwave. Guess what? White chocolate has a very low burn point and it reaches that in the microwave long before it has melted. There was no saving that first bar. I rigged up a double boiler and managed to get the second bar melted, but it never got to a really liquid stage. I made the blue sugar by mixing white sugar with blue food coloring - here it is called "colorante azul".
I used Lance as a taste tester for the first berry and I had one also. He said it tasted good, then said go look in a mirror at your tongue. Yup - all bright blue. No way we could serve these to anyone. Plan B - just dip the berries in what remained of the white chocolate and forget about a flag theme.
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| Here's what I ended up taking to the BBQ. |
They were almost all gone by the end of the evening so all's well that ends well.
I have written about Scruffy in previous posts. He showed up on our road one day, seemingly lost and disoriented. He bunked in with our neighbours across the way for a while. He would also show up at our place and our neighbors behind us. We all fed him. Over time, he acquired the name "Scruffy" and it suits him. He is some sort of terrier mix, with wiry hair and very odd leg bone structure. He will never win Best of Show at the Westminster Dog Show in New York but he would get first prize for personality. Scruffy is the brightest little dog, very well mannered, and has appointed himself protector of the properties around us.
But he really attached himself to our neighbours that live up above us on the hill. Rose Mary is Scruffy's main gal. Husband Tony says he has nothing to do with it, but we know he likes Scruffy a lot. Scruffy visits us every day and cat Genny gets along with her new buddy very well.
One day Scruffy appeared at our house sporting a spiffy red bandana. Then next time he was wearing a blue one. Then came a collar. Eventually that collar broke, and Scruffy appeared at our house the other day wearing a blue bandana, a new blue collar and a blue ID tag with his name, his address and contact information for him.
This is irrefutable proof that Scruffy is not our dog - he now has a forever home with Rose Mary and Tony.
"If the collar proclaims, you cannot disclaim".
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| Scruffy and His New Gear |
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| The Proof Positive |
In Canada, when shopping for meat, I just went to the local grocery food chains (Safeway, Save-On Foods, etc.) and bought chicken, beef or pork already cut up, laid out nicely on a styrofoam plate and plastic wrapped. All you had to do was pick out the package you wanted. There were butchers available but mostly I never interacted with them. Everything was clean and neat and you might never think about where these pieces of meat actually came from.
Here in our small town of Atenas, surrounded by farms, it is a different matter. There are no packages of pre-wrapped meat. You will have to ask the butcher for what you want. All the different cuts are laid out in the coolers in front of you so you can point, but you still have to ask for the amount. I can finally order the amount of ground beef I want, how many chicken breasts, and how much fish. By the way, the smoked pork chops are really good.
The other thing that might take a bit of getting used to by the sanitized people of North America are the hanging carcasses. They are in every grocery that has a meat department. You might see a butcher busily stripping a beef carcass of different cuts. I thought this might bother me a lot, but it hasn't. It's the way it is and hiding the fact behind plastic wrap doesn't change anything. We ate meat in Canada and we eat meat in Costa Rica. It's just that in North America things are "prettied up" so we didn't have to think of the animal the meat was coming from.
The other day I decided to buy beef bones for Scruffy, the adopted neighborhood dog. I went to the Atenas Centro market (the one opposite the taxi stands). This is the place to buy great seafood, produce and meat all week long. The Tres Hermanas (The Three Sisters) soda is always busy. We've eaten there numerous times. There are also several other sodas that attract a lot of business, shops that sell shoes, leather goods, and so on. On one side of the indoor market are, I think, four butcher shops (might be five, didn't count). I decided to go to the last one for no good reason.
I asked for tres hueso para perro (three bones for a dog) but ended up with three kilos of bones! Oh well. So there was this large bovine carcass hanging that they were breaking down and they told me it would be a few minutes. There was also a sheep and pig carcass. It's a busy butcher shop. People were coming and going, picking up their orders. There must have been four or five workers in the shop. They have a big band saw in the middle where they run the carcasses through to cut them up. Children were there with their parents so they certainly know where their meat comes from.
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| Scruffy |
I got 3 kilos of good beef bones for 2 mil ($4.00 CAD). Put them all in the freezer to kill any nasties, then cooked them. Scruffy gets one bone every few days. Apparently he is taking them up to our neighbour's house, chowing down on them, them burying them at their place. I guess their soil is not as rock hard as ours is at the moment ... we need rain.
This little dog has sort of adopted our neighbours and the neighbourhood in general.
He just appeared one day, with a limp which gradually improved. He has decided that he will bunk out at our neighbour's house but still visit all the surrounding houses for food. He shows up at our gate just about every day, with that adorable little face cocked to one side and tail a'wagging, waiting for his biscuit rations.
He has now acquired the name "Scruffy" which suits him - his coat is quite wiry. He is not neutered but is a very polite fellow and loves being around people. He pays cats no mind and never barks except to alert.
I wonder where he came from.
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