Sunday, August 27, 2017

Flamingos and pink water

Xena makes a plan to take over the world, one iguana at a time. Denise plays a game on her iPad and Herman patiently waits while incessant videos are made of the pink flamingos and iguana fight all under the blistering mid-day sun.

Gaming

I have a confession to make: sometimes I play games on my iPad, when I am not studying, knitting, drawing, writing, cooking, gardening, target shooting or reading.

Flamingos

The Yucatan is home to the pink flamingo from March to October, when it stops here to rest and breed. The best place to view the more than 400 species of flamingos is at the UN's designated site the Celestun Bioreserve, but we just went for a drive along the coast to get a break from city life and ended up seeing these beautiful pink birds in the lagoons. All along the emerald route in the Yucatan, the road was built with the Gulf of Mexico on one side and the lagoons on the other side of the road. It reminds me of the Outer Banks, where you are constantly aware that it will only take one really big wave...

The waters of the lagoons are tinted pink from plankton and shrimp, which is also what the flamingos eat.  The flamingo is lovely to see in the wild and is very graceful to watch.

Along the way back, I got some footage of the rows and rows of vacation home built by foreigners ad Mexicans alike that is always available for vacation rentals. Many of these belong to Canadian and US expats who only visit here in the Canadian winter.

Fight to the death (well nearly)

The other afternoon, Xena went out to the backyard for her usual perimeter check, when I suddenly heard the rake falling over followed by scurrying of little claws on the patio tiles. Xena had found another iguana on the ground and was dead set on killing it. I managed to close the door to the house just in time to avoid the iguana from escaping inside. I immediately set out to take some bad video of the imminent stand off from inside the safety of the living room. After several minutes of posturing, incessant barking intermittently broken by my pathetic verbiage to the dog about being careful not to get bitten, the dog was distracted by Herman and his broom and got bitten by the neck by the iguana. She then retaliated by biting the iguana at the back of the neck. Of course I did not get this on tape, because I had to go outside to help Herman save Xena's life. However, they just kind of stayed like that, holding on to each other, exhausted in the mid-day heat. Eventually the iguana played dead and Xena let go and walked away, too tired to do anything more.

To our relief, it ended after about 15 minutes. A very tired Xena had to get some ice therapy to stop hyperventilating and a seriously tired iguana slowly climbed the wall back up to her nest in the rib and block.

Looking forward

Next Friday we will move into our own home in SeyƩ. The closing date is still in the future, but for now, we will be renting from the owner. We are super excited and scared at the same time.



1 comment:

  1. I think Xena likes the iguana. Her tail is wagging non-stop!!!

    ReplyDelete