Small Business Thrills

Sharon and The Belize Zoo staff thrilled us by putting information about Moonracer Farm on the Zoo’s website. We’ve been sending people back and forth, but the Zoo just did some website updates and expanded their Lodging page with Moonracer Farm information. See us becoming famous here!

Other Wildlife Sighting Thrills

Last night Tom went to close up the shop and realized the army ants were on the move. This is actually a very narrow stream of them; sometimes they move in a mass 10 or 12 feet wide, and it can take a swarm of them an hour to pass. With these narrow streams, it’s easy enough to jump over them, but if they’re in a mass too wide to jump, you have to either try to go around, or run through as fast as you can – and you’ll still get bit a few times. They’re actually sort of cool, because they swarm through the jungle cleaning up everything. You can tell when you’re near an army of ants on the move because you can here buzzing and rustling in the leaves on the ground as everything tries to get out of their way. We haven’t had them in the house because our house is up on metal-capped poles, but we’re told that if an accessible house is in their path, they’ll go right through – and that’s a good thing, because they’ll get rid of scorpions, spiders, other ants, and any other type of bug in their way.

We’ve seen a number of interesting birds around here in the past couple of weeks, although we haven’t had the camera handy for pictures. I was walking behind the guest cabin and heard big wing beats and breaking twigs, and turned around just in time to see a laughing falcon heading up through the canopy with a snake in its talons. It stopped on a branch so I could get a good look at it, and then flew deeper into the leaves with the still-wriggling snake. I (of course) looked the laughing falcon up in the bird book and found that their diet consists mainly of snakes, both venomous and non-venomous. Now we know why they sometimes sound so hysterical as they “laugh” in the jungle.

I also saw a collared forest falcon in the trees near the back pasture last week. I knew as soon as I saw it that it wasn’t one of the more common raptors we see around here, but I followed it through three flights and landings and got a good enough look at it that I could make a positive identification from the bird book. This website has a decent picture – which is actually a painting – and information about the bird. This website has a good audio of the very distinctive cry of this bird; click the first audio link. Tom and I had been hearing this cry for a while and didn’t know what it was because it’s somewhat like the laughing falcon’s call, but the laughing falcon’s call is much less extended.

One morning as we were eating breakfast we were watching the Great Kiskadees hopping around in the trees in the yard. They seem to be getting almost tame, and will perch on branches right outside the porch screening - no doubt wondering why the people are in a cage. This particular morning we were startled when one of the kiskadees suddenly launched itself off the branch right at the screening, and grabbed a clackety-clack butterfly right out of the air right in front of our faces. The Kiskadee took the butterfly to a nearby branch and enjoyed breakfast with us. By the way, we don't know the real name of the clackety-clack butterflies, but we gave them that name because they fly around the citrus trees and make a very loud clacking sound which sounds like a loud electrical short, presumably part of a mating ritual. Here's the mangoverde link for the Great Kiskadee.

As we were riding up the government feeder road between our two lots the other day, we saw a number of violaceous trogons in the trumpet trees. They’re fairly common in the area, but we don’t usually see them right around our house, and for some reason we consider the trogons an interesting sighting. We’re not quite sure why, except that they’re colorful and distinctive – sort of like the toucans, which we also see regularly, but which still give us a thrill. This website has pictures, information, and audio clips of the violaceous trogons.

Pet Photos…thrills a minute…

Not much has been happening around here this week. We’ve had a few pretty rainy days, but it’s still been nice enough for at least part of every day to get outside and do things – or get some pictures of the animals.


Lodo finally got comfortable with his halter, but it didn’t take him long to learn that when we were near him, we were going to hold on to it, and maybe even clip a lead rope to it, so he started playing “Catch Me If You Can” with us. That lasted all of about 10 minutes, and as soon as we caught him we put a catch rope on his halter so when he’d sneak up to nibble on our clothes, we could just turn around and grab the rope. He’s finally willing to let us then clip a lead rope to him…


…and sometimes even allow one of us to lead him. He’s still playing games, stopping and starting, threatening to run, or nipping at us, but for the most part we can walk up to him, grab the catch rope, clip on a lead rope, and he’ll follow as we walk away. He’s definitely a colt though, and he’s testing his boundaries. The other day I took Ness and Lodo out, groomed Ness, and then turned her loose in the yard to graze while I groomed Elphie. Lodo was running loose with Ness, but the temptation of a cute little filly tied to the fence was too much for him, and he quickly made a pest of himself. He’d sidle up to Elphie, nip at her, and try to mount her. Somehow he figured out pretty quickly that if he came up to her on the side where she can see, she’d kick him, not appreciating the pesky little brother’s antics. However, if he approached her on her blind side, he could get much closer – close enough to jump on her. Elphie gave him a couple of good kicks and became very aware when he was approaching on that side, and I grabbed a dressage whip and gave him a couple of good whacks on the nose when he got too close. He finally decided he’d go back to grazing with his mamma, but not before I figured out that he’s not at all head shy and he’s a pretty quick study.


The dogs are all well. Nock’s eyes are very cloudy, but she still loves to stand on the porch and look for lizards. Lou doesn’t seem to hear much, and the only ways to get his attention are to clap, really bellow at him, or stomp the floor. I think he made himself deaf by his constant whining. I never realized how annoying he could be until we came here, since he doesn’t whine when he’s around me; he whines because he’s not around me. In our old life, I’d go off to work or up to the barn or somewhere far enough away that I couldn’t hear him. Here, the doors and windows are always open, and the tack shed where I groom and tack the horses is close enough that I get most of the effect of the unceasing, annoying whining. Yikes. Thanks to everybody who put up with the annoying little creature for all these years!


The Ruckus Twins are still puppies. It’s hard to get pictures of them because they never stop moving. They chew on me, chew on each other, bark at Recona, and generally create chaos.


By standing up and twisting their collars, it only took five or six shots to get a picture of them being relatively still.


But then it takes no time at all for them to go back at each other. That’s Beli with Stout’s paw in her mouth.

Money Matters

As everyone in the US has been watching the financial markets, we’ve had our own money matters down here.

First, the matter of the coconuts. What I didn’t write about in the last blog entry was that the man tried to give me $37.50BZ, but because he only had a $50 and I had absolutely no money in the house since Tom was off shopping, he didn’t actually give me any cash. He asked where we banked, and when I told him Atlantic Bank, he said he’d stop by the bank the next day and deposit the money in one of our accounts. I figured he would try to do it, but wasn’t sure if the bank would let him. I also figured I didn’t really care if we never got the money because our coconut trees received a much needed pruning, and we weren’t planning to do much with the coconuts.

So, we were pleasantly surprised the other night when Tom logged on to check our bank accounts and saw that $37.50BZ had indeed been deposited in one of our accounts. This is Belize!

The second matter is was the case of the missing money. Tom had given a couple of guys on motorcycles a ride to San Ignacio on Sunday night, and they gave him gas money. He ended up meeting neighbors in town and going to dinner with them, so he got home later than expected and just threw the change on the table. We went to bed late, and Tom was up before me the next morning. I woke to the sound of ripping, sat up in bed, and saw Stout shredding a piece of paper. I jumped up to see what it was, and realized it was paper money. I rubbed my eyes to wake up a bit, and scrounged around on the floor to find the paper scraps to see if the bill could be salvaged.

When I started to put it together, I realized I’d rescued a $2 bill. I collected the other scraps, and then decided it wasn’t worth the effort. When Tom came in from feeding the horses, I told him what happened. He looked on the table where he’d left the cash, and asked where the other two bills were. Not knowing any other bills had been on the table, I had no idea, but Tom then told me that he’d left two $2 bills and one $20 bill on the table the night before. We took a closer look at the scraps and realized that they probably came from two different $2 bills, but we saw no signs of the $20, even after a search under everything in the house.


So, since I hose the dog poop in the dogs’ yard anyway, I decided I’d keep my eyes open for a change and see what rinsed out of the poop. A couple of days after Stout’s expensive breakfast, I found this scrap. Wasn’t it considerate of Stout to eat the $20, and then pass this scrap through his digestive system just so we’d know it was the $20 he decided to swallow rather than the $2s? And no, I didn’t carefully rinse the rest of the dog doo and try to reconstruct the bill. It would take more than $10US to pay me to do that job…and I don’t think any of the scraps were big enough to reconstruct anyway!

The third matter happened today. If you know Tom, you know he’s an accountant by nature as well as by trade, and he has always been completely meticulous about keeping organized and honest books. He always told me how glad we’d be if we were ever audited, but in over twenty years of owning his own business in New York, it never happened. Finally, today, here in Belize, the Social Security auditor pulled into our driveway at about 11:30 this morning. The auditor, Herbert, beeped and I went out to meet him. Tom and Selwyn were clearing brush in our new paddock, so it took the hot and sweaty Tom a couple of minutes to get to the house. Herbert explained who he was and why he was here, so we came in and sat at the table on the porch. Tom, in his glory, ran to get his records, and he and Herbert reviewed everything. No surprise, we passed with flying colors since everything was in order and the Social Security records exactly matched our records.

They finished up just as I was about to get lunch out, so we invited Herbert to stay to lunch, and he accepted. He said he’s only been invited to stay for lunch once in his years of doing this job, and explained that sometimes employers don’t realize he’s actually helping since good employer records are necessary if an employee or ex-employee makes a false claim. We understood that, of course, and the two of us, Herbert, and Selwyn sat at the table until almost 2:00 talking. So, thanks to money matters, we now have another friend in Belize!

Just for the record, I’m not trying to make light of the financial disaster happening in the US right now. After working there for all of our adult lives before we moved to Belize, all of our retirement money is, as we see it, right in the middle of the mess so we’re being impacted too – and pretty seriously impacted by our standards. And, after visiting the US this summer I noted that the general anxiety level about life and standards of living is much higher there than here, so I can only imagine that tension level cranked up another few notches. But, when we’re not being assaulted with the bad news everywhere we turn, it’s much easier to take some pleasure in minor money matters – and to recognize that we’re being assimilated into the Belize culture and way of life. It’s only money…

A Good Excuse

This week I have a good excuse for not blogging. A week ago we sprayed the house with Dursban, a powerful insecticide, and while we toughed it out and came in the house to check email, we didn’t spend a second in here that we didn’t have to.

This is one of the drawbacks of living in a wooden shack in the jungle. The termites, along with a variety of other creepy crawlies, will take over given the chance. We’re told that we should spray at least once a year, and we’ve been closer to a year and a half, so we weren’t doing too bad. We still haven’t seen any signs of termites, but we were definitely finding more of the other types of creepy crawlies in the house, from spiders to ants to roaches to scorpions to geckos. We were starting to talk about the creepy crawlies as though we were developing our own little ecosystem in here – don’t kill the geckos, they eat the scorpions; don’t kill the spiders, they eat the ants, and so on. Plus, we’ve been fighting fleas with Recona, so we figured a good dousing with Dursban will help with that problem.

The only problem is, it’s a major pain in the butt to spray. Tom only sprayed the outside and the crawl space, not our living space, but we still had to move and cover everything. Nothing is insulated, so what gets sprayed on the outside seeps through the walls, spraying underneath the house seeps through the floors, and spraying the crawl space seeps through the ceiling. And, this stuff is toxic. I get an almost immediate headache if I smell too much of it, and many people get sick to their stomachs. It also sticks around; we expect to find dead scorpions popping up here and there for at least the next month.

That means that even though we took everything off the wall shelves and the floor and covered everything, EVERYTHING still had to be washed before it could be put away. That means every serving utensil, eating utensil, cooking utensil, pots, pans, dishes, bottles, cans, mixing bowls…everything…must be washed. And, the walls, floors, and ceilings had to be washed on the inside before we could move back into the house. It was sort of like moving in here again, with all of our stuff spread out on the table and needing to be cleaned before it could be put where it belongs. And, it took a few days of airing the house out before I could even start to think about coming in to put things together, although it bothers Tom less than it bothers me, so he had a couple of days in before I would come back.

Fortunately, we have the guest cabin, so we just moved in there for the week. That worked pretty well, although we didn’t have a kitchen, and we didn’t want to take the dogs in there in case we get guests who are allergic. We did cave and take the Jack Russells, but the Ruckus Twins had to stay in the big cage behind the house and they weren’t very happy since they’re used to sleeping with us too – and they weren’t too discrete about expressing their unhappiness with all night barking.

But, as of this morning, almost everything is back where it belongs, we’re sleeping, cooking, and eating here again – and we’re catching up on all the correspondence we’ve neglected for the past week. The plan for the future is to spray around and under the cabin every three months or so and see if that keeps the creepy crawlies away without driving us out of the house. But, if that doesn’t work, we’ll be doing this again in another twelve to eighteen months.

Coconuts for Money!`

Our property has tons of fruit trees. We don’t have enough of any single kind to do a reaping and sell the fruit, but we always have some trees with ripe fruit which we enjoy, and which we share with neighbors, friends, and pretty much anybody who asks if they can pick a few fruits.

Last week, a pickup truck with four men pulled into the driveway and one of the men asked what we do with our coconuts. I told him that we occasionally get some down for the coconut water, or we crack open a brown one to make coconut rice or coconut milk, and we share them with the neighbors…but other than that, not much. He asked if they could pick some to resell to one of the juice companies in San Ignacio. I said sure, and to my surprise he told me that they’d pay me. I went back in the house and got the camera to get a picture of the man climbing the trees with his machete to chop them down, and about an hour later the man came over, told me they’d picked 250 coconuts, and gave me $37.50BZ. Woo hoo! Tom, Selwyn, Ronald, and Wilton are just glad that those trees will be dropping fewer leaves and dried coconuts that would need to be picked up and burned!

The man also asked if I wanted to sell any avocados because our two trees are loaded and just starting to ripen…but I declined that offer since I’m not sharing my avocados, even for money!

Lodo

Lodo is getting bigger every day, and he’s a solid little pony. He’s finally big enough that the foal halter fits, so we’ve been leaving it on him to make his leading lessons a little less traumatic – we’ve found it’s much easier to start by just clipping the lead rope to his halter, rather than having to wrestle with him to get the halter on in the first place. Tom started out pushing him backwards since he didn’t want to follow, then he’d go forward after Tom if I walked behind and poked him, and now he’s leading pretty well for the most part, as long as he’s going somewhere he wants to go.

He’s also starting to interact more with the other big horses, so we think we’ll start to rotate the other horses through the pasture with Lodo and Nessa so that when we turn them out in the pasture where we’ve been growing grass they can all work on the same paddock together rather than having to shuffle them in and out in shifts. Selwyn also put up fence poles to make a small paddock near the barn where Ness and Lodo spend the night, so we can put anybody who doesn’t get along in there and leave the middle pasture open so we can plant that pasture.

The grass here really does seem to grow in about three months, and since we have three more months of rainy season we’re hoping to get the other two pastures planted very shortly.

Trails

Tom has been working hard on getting our trails chopped and cleared. We want them wide and easily navigable for night hikes, and just so people who stay here can go out for a walk in the jungle without having to suit up in too much jungle gear. Tom impressed both of us yesterday when he starting cutting a trail in from another trail towards a dead end, and ended up about ten yards away from the dead end after winding up and down through the jungle.

I’m impressed that he cleared the trail well enough that I could walk on it in shorts and Crocs and not worry about tripping or getting scratched!

Our continuing aspirations as birders...

I’m afraid it’s happening…I’m turning into a birder. Besides carrying my Birds of Belize book with me along with a camera and small pair of binoculars, I now do things like suddenly yell at Tom as we’re driving down the Georgeville Road, “Stop! Laughing falcon!”

Tom, the well trained spouse of an aspiring birder, slams on the brakes, takes a look, and jumps out of the truck with the camera to take pictures. We’re probably a good team for birding because since Tom is colorblind I’m better at spotting the birds, but Tom is much steadier and patient with the camera.

The Beautiful Rainy Season

The emails asking if we’re still alive have started, so we know we’re overdue for a blog entry. Nothing is wrong here; the only problem is that despite being in the rainy season, the weather has been wonderful. Temperatures have been quite pleasant both during the day and at night, and even though we’re getting a shower every day or two, at least part of every day is beautiful. On the day we took this picture we were intending to take a ride to visit the Barton Creek Outpost, but after touring Mark’s orange grove to see if anything was new there, we heard rumblings of thunder and saw dark clouds moving up from the south. We hightailed it home instead of going to Barton Creek, but it never rained. That’s been happening frequently enough that we ignore the storm clouds and stay outside playing rather than working on the computer to do things like updating the blog.

Last week however, Selwyn and I did that and had a bit of a scare. The group from Dangriga was coming to trial ride on Saturday, so we were trying to get a head start cleaning up the horses. I was grooming Tony, and had found a spot on his ear that I wanted Selwyn to look at, so I called him as he was walking down the driveway with the bolt cutters in hand. The sky had been rumbling for a while, but I just ignored it as usual. As Selwyn was looking at Tony’s ear, I was combing his tail with a metal comb. Suddenly there was a simultaneous flashboom, and I saw the lightening strike somewhere between where we were standing outside the tack shed and the road. Selwyn dropped the bolt cutters, which had zinged him, and jumped back about three feet, I dropped the comb, which had zinged me, and jumped back about three feet, and Tony jumped back about three feet, no doubt attempting to drop his metal shoes which had probably zinged him. Scary! Needless to say Tony was off the hook for the rest of the grooming job and Selwyn and I found things to do inside.

The Dangriga Riders!

Months and months ago, a couple from Pennsylvania who has been living in Dangriga doing some missionary outreach work stopped at our place to see if we’d be willing to work with them so they could take a group of boys they’d been working with for a trail ride. We didn’t hear from them and figured they’d either decided not to do it or had gone elsewhere, but then we received an inquiry email from Dale and Mary Ann a few weeks ago. We worked out the details and last Saturday the whole group – Dale, Carlos, Carlito, FuBu, Phillip, Kevin, and Tevin (in no particular order) – came for a ride to Big Rock.

Selwyn did his usual brilliant thing matching boys to horses, and we set out. Mary Ann and I rode at the rear of the group, and Dale stayed at the Farm with Tom so they could drive the bus up to Big Rock to meet us for lunch. On the trail, we ended up splitting into two groups, with one group being the madly galloping boys and Selwyn, who made it to Big Rock in the record time of just over an hour, and the other being Mary Ann and me riding at a more leisurely pace.

As planned, Tom and Dale met us and we had a picnic at the falls while everybody took a swim. Those under 20 gave those over 20 a few more gray hairs as they attempted to scale the falls above the big rock that gives the place its name, but Selwyn managed to wave them down, and they jumped off the Big Rock rather than the top of the cascade. Dale and Mary Ann switched places after lunch so Dale could ride home, and a couple of the boys who had had enough time in the saddle elected to take the bus back to the Farm with Mary Ann and Tom. We split up again on the ride home, with Selwyn leading the fast group and me ponying the two now riderless horses home. When we all got back, the boys got a little bonus ride as Selwyn, Dale, and Mary Ann agreed that it was a good idea for the boys to ride the horses back to our neighbor, Joe Tzul, who had let us use them for the ride. The horses were a lot more tired and sweaty than they usually are after a ride, and it’s probably safe to say that the boys and Dale and Mary Ann were a little more tired than usual, but in the end everybody had a great day and memories to last a lifetime.

The week of plumbing problems

The past week has been a week of plumbing challenges. We found the first problem in the middle of last week when I hiked up the hill to make sure our water tanks were filling. We have our water system set up so we have a 1000 gallon tank near the pipe by the road which is filled either from the pipe or from rainwater off the shop roof. We then either pump water from that tank up a 60 foot hill behind our house, or, if we have sufficient water pressure, let the three tanks on the hill fill directly from the pipe.

As I approached the top, I realized that the stand was sagging. I told Tom and Selwyn about it, and Tom made this temporary fix, but decided that we needed a new sturdier water stand so we didn’t have 1400 gallons of water washing down the hill when the stand broke and the tanks burst.

Here you can clearly see the break. Good thing the 1000 gallon tank was emptied and moved!

Tom and Selwyn emptied the tanks and took them off the stand. It may be a good thing the stand broke, because all three tanks up on the hill were due for a good cleaning.

Tom and Selwyn poured some new concrete footers and built a bigger, sturdier stand. Lucky for us we’ve had enough water pressure the past week that the tanks are refilled and water is flowing into the house just as it should!

The problem was that at this point the gray waste line clogged, and water was not flowing out of the house properly. Fortunately the toilet is on its own line with a real septic tank, so all Tom and Selwyn had to do was dig up the pipe from the house into the soakaway.

Every segment of pipe, from the drains in the house all the way into the soakaway, was clogged to some extent. Between a snake (the plumbing kind, not the living kind) and the hose, we cleaned out the pipes.

After living with septic systems my whole life, I’d like to say that we’re very good about not washing anything down the drain that shouldn’t be, but after seeing and smelling what came out of the pipes, I have to wonder if I need a better system. Yuk!

Tom is now in the process of inventing some sort of waste trapping system, probably by running the water through a barrel with a stone filter shortly after it leaves the house to prevent the pipes in the soakaway from getting so badly clogged again.

As we were in the middle of this project (I helped with the cleaning out part), a truck drove up the driveway. Three men from the Belize Tourism Board (BTB) got out and said they were in the area so they stopped by to see what we were doing. Two of the three had helped us when we registered in the BTB, so we did a little catch up on progress we’ve made since February as we gave them the tour. They said they really liked the rooms and the furniture, and the only suggestion they made was to decorate the guest rooms with Belize/jungle art – a good suggestion which we can now start to think about since the basics are done. They were intrigued by the cages, and snapped a lot of photos both inside and out, and were brainstorming about what we could do to turn the cages into an attraction since we’re lacking any natural attractions beyond the jungle on the property. Camping for security conscious back packers? A haven for parents with out of control children, or for spouses who literally want to lock one another in the dog house? We haven’t come up with anything brilliant yet, but we’ll keep thinking!

More Furniture Completed

It’s been pretty quiet around here this week. The weather has been gorgeous but hot, so we’ve been doing lots of outside stuff, but Tom and Selwyn have managed to finish some of the furniture for the guest cabin.

They finished the jobio table a few weeks ago, and that’s now on our deck. We put the plain sapodilla table on one of the porches in the guest cabin, and this prickly yellow and sapodilla table on the other porch.


This table is inside the back guest room. The light wood is prickly yellow, but Tom isn’t sure what the dark wood is.

Tom actually put some thought into which tables should go with which rooms. Each of the beds in the guest rooms is made of a different type of hardwood, so Tom tried to mix the types of woods used on the tables and the beds so each room has the maximum amount of types of wood to see.

The pictures of the two newly finished tables are taken without the Plexiglas on top so the wood can be seen without any glare. We put Plexiglas on the table tops so they can be easily cleaned and so the grooves in the wood don’t pick up too much dirt. We thought about using real glass, which would be good because it wouldn’t scratch and fog like the Plexiglas, but in order to have the glass be relatively crack and shatterproof, it would have to be so thick that it would add 80 pounds to each table. Since we move these tables around, we didn’t want to add that much weight.


Tom and Selwyn also finished two suitcase stands. The one that is folded is made of mahogany, and the opened one is made with a variety of hardwoods. Tom shamelessly copied the design from a suitcase stand we purchased at a gift shop in San Ignacio. These stands are in lots of hotel rooms around here, and are available in all the gift shops, for good reason – they’re attractive, practical, relatively inexpensive and easy to make, and they can be used as portable tables or even seats as well as suitcase stands.

We’ve had so many inquiries about making furniture for other people that we’re going to add a Furniture page to our www.moonracerfarm.com website. Tom is comfortable enough with the designs, the wood supply, and the assembly processes that he can figure out some sort of pricing. The only thing remaining to be investigated is the costs involved with shipping the different pieces of furniture out of Belize, although that doesn’t matter if people want the furniture for use here.

Sad Changes

Something happened in our community here in the beginning of July which was very significant to many people here, including us, but which we elected not to blog about at the time out of respect for the victims and their families, and because we just needed some time to think about it. A month and a half later we’ve come to the conclusion that a lot of people read this blog to see how American expats cope with life in Belize, and since this incident has made us do a lot of things differently than we did before it happened, we thought we should at least mention it.

The incident was the murder of an American expat couple in Cristo Rey, which is the town between San Antonio and Santa Elena. The couple had lived in Belize for close to twenty years, and they were universally respected and liked by both locals and expats. The wife was an excellent, well respected real estate agent. Tom and I had looked at a few houses with her and were very impressed. Her husband was working on creating a subdivision on some land they owned on the river, and employed a number of area people on that job. They were both active in area charities and in the humane society, and would take the time to help anyone they felt needed help. Donna actually taught Tom and I how to deal with beggars here. We had stopped at the Belmopan market for lunch, and a woman was begging for money for food for her children. Donna didn’t give her money, but she went to one of the market booths and bought the woman a bag of rice and a bag of beans. It seems simple, but Tom and I now take the same approach with beggars, and it’s amazing what a difference it makes in how you feel about helping when you know your money isn’t going for drugs or alcohol instead of food. And Tom and I were not the only ones in Belize who learned such valuable lessons from Donna.

On the first Saturday in July, the 15-year-old stepson of one of their employees decided that he wanted some of their things and some of their money, so he and a 17-year-old friend went to their home to rob them. The boys said that after they had taken a number of high-ticket items and a lot of cash they realized they had to kill the couple because they knew who they were. They were arrested and confessed a few days later, but the couple was already dead.

I was with my family in Vermont when Tom told me about what happened. He told me he understood if I elected not to come home, and that we could figure out whether or not we wanted to continue living in Belize. The horror was put in some perspective by friends and family in the US, where my brother told me a 12-year-old girl had been abducted, raped, and murdered less than 20 miles from his house in rural Vermont the previous week. I also found that some gentle and peace-loving friends now carry concealed pistols to protect themselves in various places they routinely go in their day-to-day lives. So, while we were still shocked, horrified, and saddened by what had happened in Belize, we realized that while Belize may not be better than other places we’ve lived as far as safety goes, it’s probably not any worse. We aren’t living in any state of worry or fear, we are just being more careful than we were when we first arrived.

To reduce the risk to us, we’ve made a few changes to how we do things here, and it’s been difficult. These people were killed basically because somebody wanted their things and their money, and it’s assumed here that all gringos have things and money, so all gringos are at risk. This isn’t to say that Belizeans don’t commit violence against fellow Belizeans, because the majority of violent crimes are Belizean to Belizean. However, the more we can minimize the visibility of our money and our things, the more we can minimize our personal risk.

So, we no longer allow people to borrow anything of any significant value. This has been an uncomfortable situation with us for a while, because we’ve learned that the Belizean borrowing ethic is a little different from what we were used to in the US. This isn’t just Belizeans borrowing from gringos; it also applies when Belizeans borrow from Belizeans, or if gringos borrow from Belizeans. First, people will ask to borrow almost anything, even things that we would never have considered asking anyone for in the US, and some of these things are things we just weren’t comfortable loaning to other people, such as our truck. We’ve had to learn to say no, because another thing with the borrowing ethic here is that the attitude is that if you’ve borrowed something, it’s yours, and you can do whatever you would do with it if it was actually yours – including letting other people use it, giving it away, trading it in for a new model (but then keeping the new model because, after all, you bought it – true story with a neighbor’s borrowed generator), using up all the consumables (like fuel and weed whacker string), taking it apart to see how it works, etc. The other thing is that very few things are returned until the owner asks, when the borrower usually says, “Oh, I didn’t know you needed it,” and people like me have to bite their tongues to avoid saying “Why do you think I have it if I don’t need it???” This little detail is further complicated because sometimes the borrowed item has been loaned to a third, fourth, or fifth party whom the owner doesn’t even know, so it gets difficult to track an item down to ask for it back when you don’t know where it is. This also happens sometimes because an item is borrowed without asking the owner. People will get all sorts of offended when you ask why they took your stuff without your permission, and they just say that since you weren't using it at the time, what’s the harm in borrowing? It’s not stealing, but it also puts the owner in a difficult position when something has been borrowed and the owner doesn’t even know who borrowed it so he can ask for it to be returned, because it won’t be returned until the owner asks.

Prior to the murders, we’d put the brakes on some of our things being borrowed because of this borrowing ethic, but after the murders we realized that by being generous and allowing some of our big-ticket items – weed whacker, camera, hair clippers, horse tack, appliances, power tools, etc. – to be borrowed, we were basically flashing our stuff to anyone who wanted to see it. We don’t know who the borrowers associate with on a day to day basis, and who might see something of ours that they’d like to have, so now we’re just saying no. Laid out like this it probably sounds easy and obvious, but we feel somewhat that we’re punishing our Belizean friends because of something a couple of truly evil people did. However, there are nothing close to seven degrees of separation in Belize – it’s probably more like two – so we are taking the advice and not letting anything of any value off the property where it may be seen.

The other big change we’ve made is that we’re no longer the bus when we head out of the Mountain Pine Ridge and in to San Ignacio or Spanish Lookout. Too many people have warned us that you never know who you pick up or what they may see in your truck, so we’re not picking up anybody unless we really know them, and then only if they’re alone. If someone we know is in a group of people, we drive right on by. This is difficult, especially since we’ve met lots of people giving them rides, and many people hear our truck coming and stand up figuring we’ll stop, and now we don’t stop. What makes us even sadder is that many people now seem to understand. I drove by a group of men on the way to Spanish Lookout a couple of weeks ago, and they all stood up and waved. I sort of cringed and shrugged, and they all waved me by and smiled, thinking, no doubt, that they wouldn’t want their wives, mothers, girlfriends, or sisters to pick up a group of hitch hiking men.

What also makes us sad, besides the fact that the lives of two good people were wasted, is that many Belizeans we talk to seem to feel guilty about the crime because they see that it was based on the idea that gringos have what Belizeans want. Most of these people would never consider, at their worst moments, doing anything bad to any other living thing, but they still feel bad and apologize (even 10 year old Wilton apologized), and talk to us about what we need to do to make ourselves safer. Then we compound the problem, at their recommendation, by no longer sharing our things or giving rides, which makes us feel bad. Everybody feels bad, sad, and uncomfortable, and there’s no telling how long it will take before this rift starts to heal.

Annual Anniversary Ride to Sapodilla Falls

Yesterday Tom and I decided to take an all day ride to Sapodilla Falls. We haven’t done that in a while, and we have a new GPS we wanted to play with, so we packed a lunch, tacked up the horses and hit the trail. Monday is our wedding anniversary, and we realized on the way there that we also rode to Sapodilla Falls for our anniversary last year, so it seems to be becoming a tradition.

Every time we go to Sapodilla Falls, we see something we haven’t seen before, and yesterday we hit the jackpot. On the way there, we saw a whole litter of baby coatis playing in some trees, racing up and down the trunks and out onto the branches, chirping at each other the whole time. We did the usual and ate our lunch, took a swim, and then headed back up the trail, but the adventure was just beginning. A group called Trek Force brings students into Belize and they do service projects in some of the more remote locations. This summer, they put in a new outhouse near the horse parking area and a little changing room down by the Falls. We decided to follow the path and check out the new outhouse, when we heard grunting. It sounded like an animal rather than a bird, so we were scanning the hillside to see if we could see any movement. Tom suddenly spotted the grunter up in a tree – it was a pretty big spider monkey, and he was watching us. We watched for a few minutes, but when we stopped moving he lost interest and headed back into the bush in the tops of the trees. We could hear at least a couple of more grunting monkeys in the trees, but couldn’t see any more. We’d left the camera near the horses so of course we missed the photo opportunity, but we were both pretty excited since that’s the first monkey we’ve actually seen in the wild here although we frequently hear the howlers.


Tom found the camera in time to get me and Recona looking for the monkeys, but no monkeys in sight.


As we were riding out on a path through the broadleaf forest, we heard the slow whumping of wings and a large shadow went overhead. We looked in a tree right off the trail, and a very large black and white raptor was perched in a tree looking at us. It had a barred tail, a white body and head, black wings, black eyes that looked like a mask, and a black crest on its head. This time we did have the camera, although the battery died (why do we even bother???) and we didn’t get any great pictures. We did, however, get enough to help us identify it when we got home, plus we had quite a while to watch it as it moved short distances twice and landed still within good range for observation, so we got to see it both perched and in flight. It’s a Black and White Hawk-Eagle, and is considered VU (Very Uncommon) in the Birds of Belize book. It’s not even listed in Les Beletsky Traveller’s Guide to Belize book because tourists and casual jungle visitors aren’t likely to spot one – so we felt very pleased that a VU bird not only let us see it, but also gave us the opportunity to get a really good look.

Then, further towards home, I happened to look down on one of the trails just in time to see a fairly large snake – maybe 1.5 inches in diameter – disappearing into the bushes on the side of the trail. So, on top of pulling out the bird and mammal books, I pulled out the snake books, where the snake I saw is identified as Red Banded Snake, Oxyrhopus Petola. I couldn’t find any un-copyrighted pictures, but this website has a good one: Red Banded Snake. Apparently this species comes in a few varieties of colors and patterns, but this was the closest to what I saw, although what I saw almost exactly matched the picture in the Belize Zoo’s snake book.

Tom and I figure Recona set it up for us to see all the different wildlife. She’s been going riding with me pretty regularly, and we were discussing whether we should stop letting her go when Selwyn takes guests out on the trail for fear she’d scare away the wildlife. Since we had more different, uncommon, and interesting sightings on this ride than we’ve had on any other, we figure we can keep letting Recona go along on the rides.

And as far as the GPS goes, we were moderately successful, although when we start using it to create maps, we’ll probably redo the ride and reset the waypoints. We also have to do a little research, because according to the GPS the round trip to Sapodilla Falls is eleven miles. However, there are many places where we don’t get the necessary satellite readings to mark the trail, and we suspect that we may have lost a little distance if the GPS extrapolates a straight line when it can’t get a reading. It also does something funky with altitude since there were points on the ride where Tom was watching it and it had us rising five to ten feet per second and we were climbing neither that far nor that fast. But, it’s still interesting to see it mark the trails so we can now see which way we’re heading on various sections of trail on the ride since we totally lose our sense of direction in many spots due to all the winding around the terrain and vegetation.


Tom is ready to hit the trail and head home, armed with the new GPS and with his faithful canine companion Recona getting a last rest.

A Beautiful Afternoon for a Ride

We’ve had such beautiful weather here lately that I even managed to get Tom out on a midweek ride. Lodo is big enough now that he can go on a short trail ride, so we saddled up Nessa and Tony.


Recona was spayed on Saturday, and she has no trouble keeping up. Nessa was just starting to work again coming back from a leg that was injured before she even came here, when she had Lodo and earned another month and a half off. And Lodo is only a month and a half old, but Tony still brings up the rear as he stumbles and ambles along. At least it makes for good picture taking opportunities.


This was Tom’s second trail ride in three days because we took a long ride through the Mountain Pine Ridge on Sunday.


On that ride, we saw some coatis and a Great Tinamou. You can see the original of this picture here.


Then, back at the ranch, Tom spotted a Little Tinamou right in the yard off our porch, which looks just like the Great Tinamou but less than half the size. Read about them here. We spotted the Great Tinamou scurrying down a jungle path, and the Little Tinamou scampering through the yard, and Tom commented that both of them look like avian rats due to their gray color and the way they move along the ground.

Tom has also been walking up the road to the gate in the morning, and one morning he heard a lot of crashing in the jungle. He didn’t get a clear look at what was making the noise, but he saw a couple of large, gray animals in the bush, so he thinks they were tapirs. The tapir is the national animal of Belize, and while we’ve seen them in the Zoo, these are the first ones either of us has seen in the wild around here.

Which Turtle is This?

The activity of the afternoon was identifying a small turtle I found in Nessa and Lodo’s cage as I was delivering their hay and water. As you can see in relation to my hand, it wasn’t a large turtle.


I got these shots so I could reference the book after I released him. I then went in and got Julian C. Lee’s A Field Guide to the Amphibians and Reptiles of the Maya World and identified him (or perhaps her, since I didn’t see the tail which is how the sexes are differentiated), and narrowed it down to some sort of mud turtle.


However, in the Lee book, I discovered that in order to identify the specific species of mud turtle, you have to get a look at the underside, so Recona helped me find him again so I could snap this picture.


I’m still not sure, but my guess is the Scorpion Mud Turtle, which was my first guess because of the colors on the head, although it turns out that all the mud turtles can have those colors. These pictures are on page 152 of the Lee book.

Loose ends

Just to tie up a couple of loose ends:

Rosa named the baby Jim Alexander. Next time I'm over there I'll get some new pictures.

And the BDF returned the tow chain, just as they said they would.

And something horse people will appreciate - we just had the vet out here to do the annual rabies shots for the horses. For five horses, it cost $75US. Yes, $15US per horse. And we can buy the other shots at the feed store and do them ourselves, although since $75US includes the farm call to the middle of no where, I think we'll just have the vet out to do it again some time when he's in the area.

Selwyn's son Junior has decided that he will continue to go to school. He wasn't too sure until Selwyn pointed out to him that he is now on the same adult working schedule as Selwyn, and when Selwyn goes to work, Junior goes to school. All grown up, and only in kindergarten!

Not much new

Not much is new from the past couple of weeks, so I just went outside with the camera to take a few random pictures.


We’ve been watching the back pasture get greener and greener. At first we didn’t believe the farmers around here who told us the grass would be three feet high by October, but given how it’s grown so far, we do now. Selwyn has been reseeding the brown spots, and we’ve been putting in fence poles so we can divide the pasture in three and rotate the horses through it. We’re told the grass has a 21 day growing cycle, so if we keep them in each pasture for a week and continue to rotate them, we should always have green grass.


We may not have enough acreage for the number of horses we have so we may have to also rotate them into the middle pasture, which is really just a paddock where we’ll need to feed them hay, but the back pasture will definitely cut down on our hay bill - although Es and Elphie don't seem to mind the hay.


When I came home from the US, I immediately noticed that everything was greener than when I left. I think it’s become even greener since then, and I finally weeded the gardens so I don’t mind having them photographed. These are the two gardens right outside the front door. During the dry season, most of the plants looked dead, but they’ve made a good comeback.


If you look closely – or blow up the picture by clicking on it – you’ll see that this tree is loaded with tangerines. We have four tangerine trees, and last year we didn’t get any fruit from any of them. This year, they’re all loaded. They seem to like having the vines pulled from their branches and the brush cleared from around their trunks.


Here’s the obligatory picture of Lodo. Isn’t he getting huge? He’s actually starting to approach us now for rubs, although getting the halter on him is still a 2-person job. He only wants to talk to us on HIS terms.


Here’s Recona doing her job, “killing” chickens.


She’s not really killing them, she’s just chasing them out of the pasture, but when our neighbors see her chasing them, they’re sure she’s killing them.


And here she is, her job well done.


It was a tough job, so she needs a big drink. Mel liked to drink out of the horse trough too, although he didn’t have to stand on the edge to do it. And Mel always insisted that it be full to the top because he liked to rest his nose on the lip of the trough (or bowl, if that’s what he was drinking from) and just lap the water up. He didn’t like having to stick the end of his nose in the water to get a drink. Recona, obviously, doesn’t seem to mind, especially when she’s been working so hard killing chickens.