Bats, Birds, Books ....oh and one little Agouti called Ben

"Bats have no bankers and they do not drink and cannot be arrested and pay no tax and, in general, bats have it made."

John Berryman (1917 - 1972)

These adorable, but slightly menacing creatures are Pygmy Fruit Eating Bats. They have a condo in a palmetto tree outside our window. They don't live there full time, but hang around (ha ha) every two or three days. Maya has been standing on a pile of crates to get photos when we can. Catching them with their eyes open is difficult. Catching them with their mouth open is even more difficult if they don't happen to be eating at the time. The little grey ones are babies and we've been watching them grow. As mammals, they nurse and we have caught this happening and it is absolutely fascinating. Welcome to our world. We're bats about Belize.

























This is Chilli. Chilli is a Red Lored Parrot who found his way from the rain forest near the Macal River, to San Pedro and then back to mainland Belize. He currently resides at Belize Bird Rescue. His wings had been cut back badly but after their expert care he is now free flying and they are hoping he will soon find a mate.

Belize Bird Rescue does more than rescue and rehabilitate birds, their kindness and hospitality attract all sorts of stray people and animals.























This is the rather inappropriately named, Hunter (the dog), with Ben (actually Benjamina) the Agouti. Ben was brought home as a newborn, with umbilical cord still attached, by one of their other gentle but giant dogs. Agouti are eaten as bush meat in Belize. Luckily no one has told Hunter that.





















This is Colette helping with early morning feeding. Ben may look very cute and truly is scrumptious, but she is a wild animal. Having spent time at Belize Bird Rescue that might be difficult to believe, since Benjamina has full run of the house, which can be somewhat disconcerting as she has a habit of rearranging things, but she is free to come and go as she pleases and will hopefully mature and attract a mate herself.





















Ben is becoming less dependent on her milk feeds and seems to enjoy solids, such as this juicy piece of mango. It is so nice to live in a place where you can pick mangoes off the tree. Have we mentioned that Belize truly is paradise on earth?





















We need to get back to the bird bit though. Somehow the cuteness of Benjamina overwhelmed us and she got in on this blog much too early. Belize Bird Rescue has hundreds of birds, many of them chickens. This chicken and her little baby seem to understand that a chicken's place is in the hen house.



























But many of the chickens don't understand that fact. This very handsome and rather large cock (sorry we couldn't help ourselves) practiced his crowing outside Colette's window every night. She claims it was reassuring but got back to San Pedro with big bags under her eyes. As she denies that she consumed far too much wine and stayed up far too late with her wonderful hostess Nikki, putting the world to rights, it must have been this very large cock that ruined her beauty sleep. (oh we really must stop with the childish innuendo)

Sometimes the situation became somewhat Hitchcockesque, as the chickens and the odd turkey settled for the evening. Trust us when we say that you didn’t want to be the first one walking down these stairs in the morning.

And the turkeys were definitely odd. This is the author Joan Fry (who incidentally should not really be mentioned in this part of the blog but she’s nearly as cute as Benjamina, so we’ll let her off) with her friend Lee and an odd, un named turkey.

Truly though, after this picture you might start to understand that there really are chickens everywhere at Belize Bird Rescue. And thank goodness for that.





















Without them we would have no eggs as we are very fussy about eggs and there really are none better than those grown on a healthy diet, free range and organic. Big kudos to Jerry and Nikki for ensuring that we do not have an eggless existence.

Oh deer. Oh deer indeed. Somehow they’ve ended up with a pair of deer as well. Bambi you would think, but these are trained attack deer and Colette saw exactly what they were capable of, when she bravely threw Nikki under the pounding hooves of one very pissed off young buck. Fortunately there was a hose nearby and Colette can certainly hose a deer down in self defence....is there a song coming on here? Hose a deer, a female deer...Actually it was the male deer who attacked and he is scary and strong.

For those of you who prefer views to animals, this is the view you wake up to at Belize Bird Rescue.

And if you are really lucky, this fantastic cowboy (and he is truly fantastic), Alyson, will take you out for a ride in the rain forest. Colette and Joan Fry joined him. Difference is, Joan is a horse expert and gets to ride regularly.

Colette loves horses but doesn’t get to ride very often and embarrassingly actually managed to find herself hanging from her bra from her saddle. Her horse was very patient with her.

Now before we get to the book section, we have a few more gratuitous photos to add.

Gratuitous and indulgent still life and a saddle similar to the one Colette dangled from by her bra.



























Gratuitous yet amusing picture of chicken in parrot cage.


















Gratuitous but somewhat heartwarming picture of Buddica and Maya.





















Completely gratuitous shot of three stunningly gorgeous people. Kathleen, Colette and Andre. Now onto bookish things.





















Joan's book signing in Belmopan sign with Joan and Jerry being propped up by a sign.





















Joan dressed in her riding gear for a horse adventure. We're not sure we've ever seen anyone in Belize get dressed up so fancy to ride a horse.





















Joan is interviewed on the Morning Show by Senator Aiden Salazar. Colette's behind the scenes version of the 'monkey dance' stopped them both from falling asleep. Early mornings are not Joan's forte'.






















San Pedro welcomes Joan with a banner. (with very tiny writing)





















Miss Tammy turns over her Hummingbird restaurant to cook some of the wonderful recipes from Joan's book, How to Cook a Tapir - A Memoir of Belize. Of course, the amazing Tapir is now an endangered species and we would never cook one, but the rest of the meal rocked.





















San Pedro's Mayor, Elsa Paz, meets Joan and receives her own signed copy of the book at Page's Bookshop.

We'd like to thank everyone who made Joan feel so welcome back in Belize and all of our wonderful friends who continue to supply us with chocolate and bring us the little things that make life a little bit easier. Much love.

How to Cook a Tapir
A Memoir of Belize
by Joan Fry

Interview with the author, by Colette Kase

Five years or so ago, I joined an online forum about Belize. This was in the early days, when Maya and I were doing research on starting a new life and we had set our sights on Belize. It was through this forum that I met Joan Fry.

Joan is an award winning author. She has written several books about horses and it was this shared interest in animals that sparked a fascinating, fun, stimulating and wonderful modern electronic pen pal relationship. Joan and I would discuss her book projects, my writing efforts, our animals, our shared irritations and gradually developed a strong friendship.

It was a surprise though, when Maya and I were standing in Belize International Airport, waiting for our flight back to England after one of our reconnaissance trips to San Pedro, when I heard someone shout my name. I turned to see a familiar, yet strangely unrecognisable face approaching me with a big smile. It turned out to be Joan Fry. Fortunately, I am somewhat more recognisable than she is. We were both very excited to get the chance to meet, totally unexpectedly, and this only proved to strengthen our friendship over the years.

Joan is an amazing writer and I was thrilled when she really dug in and started to work on her most recent book, How to Cook a Tapir, which is a memoir of her time living in Belize in the 1960's. She had tempted me with interesting snippets about her experiences but I couldn't wait for her to put it all into print. I probably encouraged her to the point for being a nag, but I am just absolutely delighted to be able to help introduce this wonderful new book.

How on earth did you end up in Belize in the first place?

I married an anthropologist who was interested in studying the Maya. Actually he was my high school sweetheart--two years older than I was, and did he ever use that fact to his advantage! The early 1960's were "the good old days" when fathers and husbands always knew best. But--I digress. My husband had spent the previous summer living with a Kekchi family in Crique Sarco and had met the local priest, Fr. John Paul Cull. Father Cull promised me a teaching job, even though I was only a sophomore in college and not Catholic.

What did you think when you first discovered that you were going to Belize? Had you even heard of it?

The country was called British Honduras in those days, and no, I'd never heard of it. Nobody in family had either, except my grandfather. He'd been a sailor in his younger days and remembered taking mahogany out of Stann Creek. It was fun for me when I actually saw Stann Creek, although I was violently seasick at the time and couldn't properly appreciate it.

What were some of your preconceptions about Belize?

I didn't have many, although there had been a spate of jungle movies when i was a kid, and they inevitably featured tarantulas the size of toy poodles. I've always been terrified of spiders. The first time I saw a real tarantula was when I was washing my hair in a stone "shower" underneath the cistern in our boarding house in Belize city. I thought some of the stones were covered with black moss until I splashed shampoo on one and it moved.

What was the biggest culture shock?

I was one of the first white women most of the women of Santa Elena had ever seen, and they gawked at me nonstop--I was their entertainment. Being a blue-eyed blond who was taller than most of them made them even more curious about me. I was never alone. At least one person was always in the house with me, and if my husband and I walked to the Rio Blanco pool for a swim, half a dozen kids would follow us. That went on for months. Actually it went on as long as I lived there, although by the time we left, the people who visited genuinely wanted to visit, not stare.

Who was your first real friend in Belize and when did you realise that you had become 'friends'?

Her name was Lucia Bah, and she was a neighbor who spoke fairly good English. Her daughter was one of my students. I realized we'd become friends one day when she confided that she didn't like another neighbor's husband because he beat his wife and kids so violently. Yes, it was gossip, but it was also the first time a woman trusted me enough, and was interested enough in hearing my thoughts about something, to initiate a conversation. Lucia also taught me to cook. I owe her a lot. I wish she'd lived long enough to see this book.

Did your husband (at the time) prepare you sufficiently for your experiences or did he mislead you at all about what life would be like?

He showed me photos but made everything sound very romantic--and there's really no way to convey the humidity, the smells, the feel of the jungle through photos alone. I had done virtually no traveling (except to Ontario, Canada, which was like traveling to upstate NY), and was in no way prepared for any of it--the open sewage canals in Belize City, the caste system (don't forget, BZ was an English colony then), and particularly the poverty of the Maya. They were subsistence farmers--very few of them even used money. They bartered for what they needed. My husband insisted that I wear skirts and blouses because that's what the Maya women wore and wouldn't allow me to smoke because the Maya women didn't. He was wrong on both counts. Most women didn't wear blouses at all, and they smoked home-rolled cigars.

What is your favourite Belizean recipe and why?

Escabeche. It has a unique taste (each cook arrives at a different balance between chile pepper and vinegar), and to me, believe it or not, it's a comfort food.

Do you still eat Belizean food? What foods do you miss from Belize?

I still make escabeche from time to time, and I still like making and eating soup of all kinds. Especially when the weather gets cold. I love chili but hold the beans. I do miss tamalitos--green corn tamales--but the food I miss most is corn tortillas. They don't taste authentic even in the Mexican restaurants that have a token Mexican woman in front making "fresh" ones. As for corn tortillas you buy in the store--have you ever taken a look at what's in them? I'm looking at a package right now, ant it lists nine ingredients! What the hell is amylase? All they should contain is corn treated with lime (the mineral, not the fruit), and water. The best are incredibly fragrant with a soft, moist texture. I'm drooling!

You clearly have had a lifelong love for Belize since coming here in the 60's, what is it about Belize that has kept you enthralled all these years?

"Enthralled" is a good word. I've asked myself that question, and I still can't give you a definitive answer. I'm sure the Maya continue to fascinate me because they had a lot to do with forming my values. I was an only child and a girl and had led a very sheltered life in the States. But in Belize, I was alone a lot--my husband was always off conducting ethnographic studies. So when I had a decision to make, I only had myself and the Maya to fall back on. I made some bad decisions but more often than not I made the right ones, probably because there was no authority around to tell me any different.

Did you really cook a Tapir?

Yes. And it was delicious!

How to Cook a Tapir - A Memoir of Belize, by Joan Fry will be released in April 2009. The book can be pre-ordered from Amazon, which happens to be offering a great pre-publication price. To order click here.

Happy Holidays from Colette, Maya, Buddica, Midas and Octavius.