Pixie in Paradise

I try to have some semblance of structure to certain parts of my days because it helps keep me grounded. If my early waking hours involve having a leisurely coffee with a cat nearby, then my morning is complete. While intermittently pouring hot water over my coffee grounds in the chorreador, I walk around and turn off the property lights. Each evening before dark I turn them back on. This morning as I rounded the corner to turn the lights off near the outdoor kitchen I noticed a bag on the ground. It’s the type that typically has homemade bread in it from the gourmet market, 300 meters from my house. It’s a huge round loaf and I didn’t see it anywhere in sight. Peering around the counter in the kitchen I saw an airtight plastic container on the ground with its lid off, two tomatoes and an avocado nearby. I picked up the empty bag and threw it away but I left the veg and container on the ground, I sure did. Don’t tell anyone. I want the sweet guests to learn their lessons the hard way so the behavior isn’t repeated. Had I picked up their groceries they may have never been aware of the level of no-no they committed. Now in reality, Armin comes in early to start working and he may have been the one who put the tomatoes and avocado away. I actually think he later found some of the bread off the path in the yard areas which is how he pieced the scene of the crime all together.

If you’ll recall, I like to think of myself as the “hostess with the mostest,” but in reality I’m spicy as fuck. In my version of reality it feels like I’ve told every single guest that passes through here to lock their shit up tight. Now I definitely do NOT say it that way. I politely and firmly reiterate that we live in the jungle and we cannot just eat anywhere, drop crumbs willy-nilly, nor can we keep food outside. I’m assuming what happened in this case is that my precious couple in the back casita rolled their bread bag shut and set it on the outdoor storage shelf with their casita’s name on it. They also must have put their veggies in the plastic container and sealed the lid. That eliminates most jungle wildlife – unless you have something that resembles a thumb. Armin came in and found the bread, saying it was most likely a mapache. I quickly searched for the English name for mapache, which is racoon. Of course. One of those cute little trash pandas strolled into the kitchen like he owns the place and made himself a sandwich. Later when I saw the guests we laughed about it and they said they knew better. This wasn’t their first time living in the jungle and they’re actually building a house here. 

Raccoons live everywhere but not everywhere I’ve lived have I had to use an outdoor kitchen! It’s an experience for sure. I walk down the path past three casitas and the pool, turn a corner, walk to the back of the property and take an abrupt left into the kitchen. Each time this route is taken, nimble feet and watchful eyes have to be on the lookout for cute little green and black poisonous dart frogs. Many of these beautiful creatures seem to enjoy our property, I’m guessing because we have such beautiful foliage for them to hide in. When it rains they’re everywhere, I see two to four of them per day, sometimes more. The little frogs will chase each other across the paths and under leaves. They’re probably all used to me slowly following them with my phone, taking videos while talking to them.

More bothersome than a random raccoon is the constant presence of insects. If you are a little squeamish about insects, this is not the place for you. I’ve been very lucky so far in terms of what little creepy crawlies I’ve had to go up against. I went barefoot in the jungle for the photoshoot I did and thinking back on that now, wow, was I lucky to not have been bitten by anything venomous.! 

Here’s the thing, I live in a city in southern Arizona. We have roaches. I find roach body parts, or a whole roach heels to Jesus (on its back), many mornings. A whole roach means it was depressed and couldn’t go on with life anymore. Legs strewn about means my three-legged cat wanted to feel like a real macho man and chase something down while I was trying to sleep. I hate these gross, ugly creatures but accept that it’s part of life in cities and warmer climates. Add humidity to that warm climate – like here in Central America – and you have a breeding ground for some of the most beautiful, exotic, scary and absolutely toxic, poisonous creatures. This includes the insect population, especially the insect population!

Temporarily, I have a new roommate. Erik is a friend of the owner of the resort and her son. He’s in his late 20’s and has traveled throughout the world much more extensively than I. This is why I didn’t think I’d have to give him my usual “We live in the jungle, don’t leave food out, don’t drop crumbs” speech, but I did. Even after the speech, I came home one day and he had set a half-cut watermelon on the counter with a piece of plastic over the cut side. First of all I explained that watermelons already cut will spoil so fast in this hot, humid climate. Secondly, bugs will get under the plastic square covering the pink melon flesh. He didn’t believe me, but finally agreed to shove the watermelon into the fridge. I tried to get the point to really hit home by expounding on that and telling him about the time in Arizona where I opened my French press to make coffee and found a roach in the very bottom of the glass carafe. The plunger was all the way down to the bottom and the bug still made his way in and spent the night…alive! (In case you’re curious, I did make coffee that morning but I bleached the French press first). 

I’ve also been repeating myself a little too much – poor Erik – by telling him we have to close the front door at night before bedtime. Even though the main house has a front door with open air gaps about five feet high, the plastic covering toward the bottom will hopefully deter most animals from coming in. I told him that we don’t want a jungle party in here, even though it sounds like something fun.

Erik is heavily on the artificial intelligence (AI) bandwagon. He’s incredibly smart and he will go far. I’m grateful to know him and excited to see where life takes him. It sort of feels like I acquired a new little brother: sometimes I want to choke him, sometimes I want to hug him, but he feels like family. He tries to get me excited about AI technology but I’m soured on it immediately because of how people are trying to use it as a substitute for us gifted, professional writers. I think it’s a great tool to use for marketing your business, but leave the creative heavy lifting to us, well, “Creatives.” Erik even went so far as to point his phone at a few plants and get photos, sending them through ChatGPT. The result is instant acknowledgement of the official name of the plant and an amazing summary of it. He even went so far as to take a photo of Mo and the result was magic – to me, anyway. That was the moment I thought, okay, I could maybe get used to a little AI – for entertainment purposes. Then, to be really cheeky, Erik somehow asked the AI robot squirrels in his computer to create images of a “jungle party,” and he also described our house. He sent them to me and I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. The result was a chaotic digital illustration that perfectly depicted what I envision when bread is left out in the jungle. Get the party started, one pan casero at a time.