Pixie in Paradise

I learned a new sentence in Spanish last week: “Me picó una abeja en la planta del pie.” I’m expanding my limited intermediate Spanish fluency one sentence at a time (remember the doorknob and pliers conversations?), a fluency level I now call, “element-ermediate.” New word, made it up. Why not? Some moments I really know what the conversations are about and what we’re all saying; in others I am spitting out words and have no idea how I even know them, or worse, if they’re actually words. If that wasn’t enough, I now have a weird habit of speaking Spanish and English in the same sentence, especially when excited or passionate about something – which happens a lot. The good news is, most ticos here that speak some English do the same thing, we just do it slightly differently than each other. For example, our filler words – but, and, for, etc. – are in our own languages and then we fill in around it with each others’ native languages. We’re all trying.

None of this even matters at all right now because I’ll bet the Costa Rican animals don’t care what spoken language we’re using. This certainly did not matter to the solitary bee whose face I smashed into the bottom of my foot. It was actually their butt, not their face, but I bet their tiny head was affected! I was peacefully walking the beach and not watching where I stepped. The sand on Playa Negra is pristine, clean and fine, so it feels like soft powder. There’s not really a lot to watch out for if you’re closer to the water than the jungle on the other side, but I have seen these random little bees on the beach once in a while and just assumed they were a type of ground bee. I never wondered why a bee was on a beach. These solitary bees live in rotten wood or bamboo and since our tides are so high right now, the ocean water is roaring all the way up to the jungle and edge of the road, dragging remnants back toward the sea with it. Not only did this little bee get caught in a waterboarding incident with the ocean but then I smacked its little buns with my instep. Holy shit! 

I was standing in moving water and sand but balanced on the left foot to see what fresh hell that right one had just gotten into. In my mind I figured it had to be a bee or wasp, not thinking a tiny crab pinch would feel quite like this. Sure enough in the bottom of the middle of my right foot was a bee. I hopped a bit closer to the jungle and hung onto a branch of some sort with my right hand and yanked as hard as I could with the left to pull the stinger out of my foot, after knocking the rest of the bee off. I’ve been stung before so I was fairly certain there was no danger of anaphylaxis, even though a tropical Central American insect can really pack a punch when it comes to venom – think eyelash vipers and poisonous spiders and frogs, even! Stepping on the bee was uncomfortable but that next 10-20 minutes or so is what I really felt, while trying to walk back home. Apparently, that reaction is what you want to happen. 

My sweet friend Jordan, a nursing student, DIY goddess for all things home repair, decorating, rock climbing, camping, cooking, gardening, drawing and Life-ing, said people who are able to fight off insect venom like I can have what it takes to avoid serious side effects. She is not so lucky and has to carry an EpiPen™ everywhere with her. Jordan can’t even eat products with honey or bee pollen in them. How sad and scary, but to be honest she’s the absolute sweetest person I’ve ever known, I believe she’s as sweet as a honeybee. In my mind her bee sting reaction to her own kind causes her to react this way in some strange, paradoxical response – like Peter Parker to his spider. 

Just like the bee didn’t care that I was swearing and apologizing to its tiny corpse in English – and a little Spanish – my beloved cat Mo did not care what language I was speaking to him (mostly to myself) when performing porcupine quill removal surgery on him Sunday morning. I still find it absolutely remarkable that this stray cat is so sweet and loving to me. Of course, I feed him so he’s clearly using me, but I’m okay with that and he is affectionate even when his belly is full. He shows no interest in anyone else staying here and is still rather skittish of all humans, which I’m glad for, since I’m not sure of what he does once he clocks out from the resort and leaves for the night. (Mo was actually brought to this resort two years ago as a kitten, to be a working animal, to keep the rodent population down).

Sunday morning I was about to make my coffee when I saw Mo waiting on the front patio. He was holding his right front paw up and I quickly saw why: there were three porcupine quills embedded deeply, sticking straight out of it. This cat somehow got attacked in the jungle by a porcupine, survived it, then made his way here to me at the same time he always does for breakfast, like he has every single day for the last three months. It feels longer than that but I suspect it’s because I spend hours and hours with Mo and also he gets fed anywhere from two to four times every day. If I’m not at the beach for my daily walks or at the Saturday morning farmers market, you’ll usually find me at home. I love it here. Mo is here. The few items I have to my name are here. I am content.

Thankfully, one of the few items I ALWAYS have on me when traveling is a hemostat. Old habits die hard. Working in emergency medicine for years, most of us would attach hemostats to our scrub pants. I had two hemostats at all times, one carried a roll of tape for securing airways, the other was a “just in case.” Poor Mo hobbled on three legs over to the food bowls as I nervously put dry kibble in one. Knowing I was his only hope since no one else can get close to him, this was quite the moment. Shit fuck. This is a shit-fuck moment. I am scared at this point and would rather be pulling quills out of a large dog, than a cat. At least you can hold a dog while someone else is performing the task at hand. Even the tamest cat becomes a slippery, furry serpent with razor sharp fangs and claws dripping with bacteria you don’t want jammed into your body. I was pretty sure I was about to experience all of that and then some. The best way is almost always a sneak attack, that way you can make the first shot count, and assess the rest after the first wave. It sounds like I’m going into battle, because I was. Have you ever had to wrangle an animal for anything? I’ve done it my whole life, gathering dairy cows from a pasture, taming wild farm kittens, milking and feeding liquid dewormer to my very spirited goats, applying coconut oil to my chicken’s comb due to frostbite and any number of fun surprise procedures that came up during 20 years of dog guardianship. I seem to recall pulling teddy bear cholla spines out of my little red dog with hemostats too. 

Some of these were necessary, mandatory even, to save the animal’s life. Some were just kindnesses, out of compassion. Pulling porcupine quills out of Mo felt like all of the above, but it was going to hurt him and most likely, me. It came down to asking myself, “How much do I love this cat?” I’m the only one that can and will attempt to help him and clearly he had gotten any quills out of himself that he could, but these were not coming out. If they stayed, he’d get a raging infection probably, causing relentless pain and suffering. I love Mo as much or more than any animal I’ve ever crossed paths with. Did I mention how scared I was to do this?

I set down his bowl of dry kibble and Mo got busy eating. Seriously, it’s the cutest crunch in the history of eating noises. For someone with legit misophonia I can tell you animals have an angelic crunch, but humans I want to punch in the throat for chewing loudly. The first two quills were sticking out far enough that I knew I could just grab and pull if I did it quickly enough. I also knew that in addition to my hemostats I had thin leather gloves packed somewhere, but not sure of their location. He crunched, I pulled, and somehow he was fast enough to swipe me with his front claws after I pulled the quills out. I couldn’t move my hand out of the way before he had raked it good. I didn’t even notice I was bleeding until I came back downstairs with the hemostat, realizing the second wave of quill removal would require this surgical tool. The other distraction I didn’t need Sunday morning was that we had guests in one of the rooms near my kitchen and they decided to have early morning sex. While I was in the “operating room” (the kitchen floor) I had to be an unwilling bystander to the sounds of other people getting it on. I’m going to manifest that I will get woken up that way sometime soon rather than performing cat surgery on the floor of the kitchen. I will even combine that prayer and wish for early morning sex on the floor of the kitchen as long as, 1) the cat isn’t there and 2) hemostats aren’t involved. 

I brought the hemostats downstairs, filled Mo’s red bowl with food and waited for him to be distracted by his favorite: milk. This time I was more nervous and scared because Mo had already become skittish of me after I caused him the pain of pulling out the first two quills and I also didn’t want more cat scratches. Those can be dangerous for your health! They also sting a little, like the bee, but in a different way. This last quill was also deeply embedded, the other two were almost halfway stuck into his paw, but this third one was even further. Because of this, I knew my only shot at pulling this out cleanly was to clamp down on it with the hemostat and then pull straight forward with as much quick power as I could in hopes that none of the quill barbs would do more damage. Seriously, this sounds like I’m pulling arrows out of an ally in a Medieval war as if I’m King Arthur and Mo is Sir Lancelot, of the Knights of the Round Table.

Shaking off the sex noises, the fear of this procedure that’s about to go down, I get on the floor on my stomach next to Mo. It won’t matter what I’m telling myself or him in any language, I just have to get all of these quills out of this cat if I love him as much as I profess to. Quietly and slowly placing the hemostat around the last quill, I clamped the tool shut. Two seconds later I inhaled, and as I exhaled, I pulled that quill straight out as strong and quick as I could. Mo is pissed. He jumps up and away from his breakfast and can’t figure out why I’ve tortured him not once, but twice this morning. He doesn’t want me near him and is even thinking twice about his food. I step away to hyperventilate for a split second and collect the quills, then realize I have to get some soap on my bleeding hand. I had a patient once who ended up on life support because her cat scratched her and gave her bubonic plague! Yes, speaking of Medieval times, bubonic plague in modern day. Yuck. That’s a rare example of how things can go wrong but you never know what disgusting germs are on cat claws. Since Mo roams at night AND just danced with a porcupine it’s clear that he is one dirty bird. I wash my stinging hand, Mo eventually returns to his breakfast and an hour or so later, he comes back to let me pet him. And I have had enough stings and scratches to last me a while, in any language.