Seriously Mum, Where's that Donkey?

by Parks, Alan

  I called out to Lorna. “Miguel has parked his car by his gate. Come and look, the water is ever so close.”

  Lorna rushed up, and sure enough the water was edging nearer and nearer the car.

  “It’s at the wheels now,” I said. We were moving between different windows trying to see if Miguel was coming back. Still the water poured down the hills in a torrent.

  “Do you think it will go underwater?” asked Lorna.

  “I’m not sure really, it won’t do it any good though,” I replied.

  Suddenly there was the sound of a car horn outside our gate. I went to investigate and saw two men I didn’t recognise dressed in the camouflage colours of hunters. They were speaking and pointing to the bridge. I couldn’t really understand but I think they were saying that they needed to get home but the water was over the bridge, and did I think it was safe to drive through? I suggested that I didn’t think this was advisable and with a huff and a puff they went and watched the rising water for a while. Shortly after they obviously decided I was right and went and sat in their car, looking rather forlorn.

  I raced back upstairs to see what was happening. The water was still rising, and up to door level on the car now. There was an enormous crack of thunder followed by more torrential rain. A surge of water came up what was once the stream and nudged Miguel’s car, spinning it a little and moving it towards the road. There it sat for a while until the next surge, which pushed it towards the edge of the bridge, front wheels hanging over the edge. Another crack of thunder and a flash of lightening. About 30 seconds later, we saw a tree being washed along the river heading towards the car. As the tree hit the edge of the bridge, it spun so it was sideways on as it reached the vehicle, pushing it over the bridge. The car landed in deep water, and started to float away!

  The car alarm was blaring and we could hear the repetitive hooting of the horn and see hazard lights flashing as it was washed downstream. The rain showed no signs of relenting, but finally the car washed up about half a kilometre away, alarm still shrieking and lights flashing. After another hour or so, the storm passed and we went out to survey the damage. A car had driven down the track, but the bridge was impassable, still under about four feet of water. The man looked along the river and spotted Miguel’s car and began to panic. We didn’t really understand what he was saying until we heard, “Miguel, Miguel!” I managed to reassure him that Miguel was fine and wasn’t in the car, although I didn’t know where he was. Just then we saw him with a gang of young lads come striding down from his house, armed with ropes.

  The other man and I were seconded and dragged along on a retrieval mission. I followed reluctantly knowing that I was going to end up cold, wet, and probably, as usual, an object of hilarity. The group marched off to Ramon’s house and found him dry and warm in front of a fire. “¡Mucha lluvia!” Lots of Rain! Everyone was talking about the rain and the car.

  Ramon went and started up his old tractor, and Miguel jumped on next to him. The rest of us followed behind. I trudged along, not being able to join the conversation about how the ‘rescue’ mission was going to go down. Ramon took us over one of his olive hills and, as we came down the slope on the other side, we were all slip-sliding. By the time we reached the beached vehicle, the horn had stopped blaring but the hazard lights were still flashing as though the life was fading from the car before our very eyes.

  Miguel jumped off the tractor and gestured to us (the young ones) to get behind the car and push it out of the river towards the olives. Ankle-deep, we started to heave. The car wouldn’t budge as it was grounded underneath. The next plan was to tie a rope to the front and try and drag it out. Ramon started the tractor up and began to drive. The car scraped along the riverbed, screeching and banging on large rocks that had wedged beneath it. Eventually, it mounted the bottom of the olive grove and Miguel jumped back on the tractor, facing backwards, giving us instructions on where to stand and how to push to keep the car on a decent line as it was towed back up the hill. By the time we got it back to the top and ‘parked’ it at the side of the track, you could see the sorry state of the vehicle. The front was all caved in and the badly dented bumper had ripped off during the rescue. The driver’s side doors were dented where the tree had thumped into them, while all the lights were smashed to smithereens. It was a write-off.

  It remained on the roadside for a few days before being collected by a grua, a tow truck, and taken off to be assessed. We never saw it again. I guess it went to car heaven, or wherever they go when they die.

  As I got back to the house, Lorna called me upstairs and I went up to see what was going on. The two hunters were trying to make their getaway. One was driving the car, the other had taken off his shoes, socks and trousers and was wading, knee-deep in water, across the bridge using a stick to prod either side of the road so that the driver knew where the bridge finished. We watched with baited breath. Although the river level had dropped, the force of the water was still strong and we didn’t want to see another car washed away, this time with an occupant. Thankfully they made it across unscathed, and once one person had done it others soon followed. The other side of the crossing, our newly cemented track, had held up well; with just some debris to remove, it was once again passable. Life in the Spanish countryside, never a dull moment, eh?

  Chapter 24

  Sounds like the Countryside

  ‘Woopwoopwoopwoopwoopwoop.’ Five seconds later, there it was again. ‘Woopwoopwoopwoopwoopwoop.’

  “The girls are alarm-calling, I’m going to see what’s going on.”

  I went out onto the terrace overlooking the alpacas’ paddock and I could see the three of them, Lily, Cassandra and Bermuda, all staring at something outside the fence. Bermuda’s body was shaking as she made the shrill alarm call again. ‘Woopwoopwoopwoopwoopwoop.’

  I recognised the dog immediately; it was Rocky, the bull terrier I had first seen in Ramon’s house when he was just a pup. I went back in to tell Lorna.

  “It’s one of Ramon’s dogs. Hopefully he will make his way home. The girls don’t like him, but he is just sitting staring at them.”

  After a while I went back to the terrace to check. At first I couldn’t see him and was just about to go and tell Lorna when my eye caught something. There, at the corner of the fence, was Rocky lying still and immobile. My first thought was that he was dead.

  “Oh shit, the dog’s dead. I think he tried to get in under the fence and it looks like the girls have kicked him to death,” I shouted to Lorna as I ran out.

  The three of them were all standing looking at the dog, and occasionally taking a moment to munch some hay. I breathed a sigh of a relief as I got to the scene and, as Rocky saw me, his tail started wagging. He had tried to get in to see the alpacas, got himself stuck and obviously just resigned himself to his fate. I lifted the fence up and he scurried out towards the animals. He was as interested in them as they were with him, but as they got close he barked at Cassandra and tried to chase her. I was worried that a) he might hurt her and b) they might kick and hurt him. So I went towards him and Rocky sat down submissively, refusing to move. I picked him up, put him under my arm, and carried him out of the field. He was completely impassive so I put him in the passenger side of the car and he curled up in a ball on the floor. I drove up to Ramon’s house, and got out of the car where I found them working on a hillside.

  “Ah, problema con perro,” I said. (Problem with the dog.)

  Ramon smiled and Rocky was reunited with his owner.

  Over the next few weeks we had a fair few visits from Rocky. He had obviously taken a liking to the alpacas and, on one occasion, had got in with the boys. What alerted me was that I could see the chickens all lined up behind a gate looking intently at something. Sure enough, there was Rocky eyeballing the boys and vice versa. As soon as he saw me, he barked at them and started chasing them, so again I had to grab him, put him in the car and return him to Ramon. After a few such occasions, Ramon created a run for the
dog by attaching high tensile wire running between two olive trees about 50 metres apart, and using a climbing clip to attach the his collar to the wire. He now had a run where he could at least move about freely (ish) and get some shade. We didn’t see Rocky again after that.

  During every season of the year, there are noises here in the Spanish countryside. In winter, it gets dark at about 6 pm and normally there are no people in the surrounding houses unless it is a fiesta. So if you go outside and look around, there are no lights for miles and it feels like the middle of nowhere.

  However, during the day it’s a different matter as November marks the beginning of the olive picking season. This means we have teams of workers on the hills around us armed with olive shakers, sticks and tractors, all looking to harvest the olives as quickly as possible. We also have the incessant noise of trailers driving past on the track hauling sacks of olives to Montoro, or transporting teams of workers from the town.

  If we get a heavy rainstorm, there is the sound of the water cascading down the hills into our stream which soon becomes a wild river. This can be accompanied by howling winds and rock falls. If it snows (twice in five years) and the snow settles on the branches of the eucalyptus trees that line the stream, you can hear their branches creaking, stretching and eventually breaking under the weight. At the end of the season, it is time to lop the trees and collect firewood. This involves chainsaws and the ever-present haulage trucks. Olive season also coincides with hunting season, so we often hear loud gunshots in the hills; although we see the cartridges on the ground the following day, we never see the hunters themselves.

  As we head towards spring, the tractors are out in force again spraying the olives for insects and weeds. Also, farmers get out their buzzing strimmers to cut back vegetation in order to prevent fires.

  One day in February, I was out feeding the alpacas after some particularly heavy rain. The stream was starting to revert to its normal size, but there was a pool that had formed very close to our bridge. Over the past day or so we had seen cars stopping and people looking into it before moving off again. On this day, there was a strange sound: ‘Whop! Whop! Whop!’

  I looked around for the source of the ‘whopping’ and saw two old men down at the river. They hadn’t seen me so I stood in the alpaca paddock and quietly watched them going about their business. They had built a dam of sorts to stop the flow of the stream and direct the water through a small break to a second smaller pool. One of the men was standing by this with a little net, the kind you buy your child to take to the beach. The other man was bashing the surface of the first pool with a black plastic tube. ‘Whop! Whop!’ Every so often, the man at the second pool dipped his net in, scooped out a small black fish and threw it into a large bucket. This carried on for about an hour before they left. The next day, a group of youngsters arrived with fishing rods and sat on the edge of the bridge, drinking beer, laughing and trying to catch the tiny fish.

  Then other creatures join in. Birds arrive for the summer, returning to nests from previous years, while fledglings build new ones. The swallows, in particular, like to use alpaca fleece mixed with mud to construct their nests. From first light, the swallows serenade us through till dusk. Once the eggs hatch, we then hear the baby birds calling for food. There seem to be two lots of babies every year; one in June and one in July. At the end of summer, the swallows move on to pastures new. During summer, there is a continuous buzzing sound that comes from the eucalyptus trees via the insect life. You can hear it from over 100 metres away.

  Then there are the cicadas, grasshopper-type insects that roost in trees calling out to each other, along with frogs and mosquitoes - the latter at night when you are trying to sleep - while the frogs frequent small patches of mud and water, croaking and 'ribbiting’ incessantly.

  Of course, however, the real all-year-round sounds of the countryside in Spain are dogs barking and cockerels crowing. On some farms, the dogs bark from dusk till dawn until the owners return to feed them. This sets off a chain reaction, like the scene in 101 Dalmatians, and normally culminates in a collective howling session that includes our five dogs. Most of the locals also have cockerels and they crow all day; it doesn’t matter what time it is. Sometimes they even crow at night, hence the reason we don’t own any.

  Chapter 25

  It’s a Dog’s Life

  When we first moved to Spain we were aware of the problem with stray dogs, and if you have read my book, Seriously Mum, What’s an Alpaca? you will know we already have our own motley collection of hounds picked up from the campo, or rescued from someone on the move.

  During our first year living here at the Olive Mill, a little ginger dog turned up: he had big pointy ears and we recognised him as a podenco, one of the hunting dogs used by the locals. Perhaps he had run away from a shoot but he was certainly a mess, filthy dirty with a few cuts on his body. He was also starving. We gave him food and water and shut him in the stable which was at the time not being used. We made up posters on our laptop, laminated them and posted them on the fence. No joy. After a few days, we heard a toot on a horn and went out to find Ramon junior who asked about the dog on the poster. As soon as he saw that it was a male he wasn’t interested. (If he had been a bitch, things might have been different. Someone might have wanted to use it for breeding.)

  So I decided to hit the Internet, hunting down email addresses for dog shelters on the coast which are normally run by charitable ex-pats who hate to see animals suffering. We kept getting the same reply, “Sorry, we’re full.”

  I then posted on a very well-known forum that we had a dog we were looking to re-home. A few people sympathised but didn’t offer to take the little fella, who by now had become known as ‘Lil Hobo.’ After a day or two, I was abused - and there is no other word for it - by a woman who said I should take the dog to the vet and have him put to sleep immediately if I had no intention of homing him myself. I couldn’t believe it. I replied saying that I was hoping to find him a home somewhere or at least give him a chance of finding a home before resorting to that kind of action. In any case, getting a dog put down costs money, and at the time it was money we did not have. A full-blown argument ensued with other people joining in, and that was the end of my Internet forum involvement.

  Eventually we spoke to Manuel who asked us to bring Lil Hobo in to see if he had a microchip. We knew he wouldn’t have but went anyway. Manuel suggested a place in Cordoba that might take him. Apparently the company has a contract to keep dogs off the streets of the city and even has a website on which they post pictures and try to re-home strays. I didn’t, to be honest, know how long the process would take but they were open every weekday so it had to be Lil Hobo’s best shot.

  So one day I set off to take him to the shelter, leaving Lorna a sobbing wreck and me not feeling much better, but I knew it had to be done. At the shelter, the woman behind the counter asked me where I was from and where I had found him. I explained, in broken Spanish, but she wasn’t happy. She said that I should have taken him to the ayuntamiento in Montoro. Now, there are, at any one time, up to half a dozen stray dogs running around Montoro, so I am not sure the ayuntamiento would be too thrilled at me adding more to the list. Finally though, the Corboda centre said they would take him so I handed him over and left quickly. I drove home thinking about the little fella. I really hope someone came along and gave him a good home.

  Our next stray dog experience was a little better, but we had a few bumps along the way. Since we moved here, both Lorna and I had put on weight: I had stopped playing football and she had stopped dancing, so periodically both of us would feel the urge to start exercising.

  On one of these ‘kicks’, Lorna was taking Carlos out for an extra walk once a day and on this occasion, when they reached Ramon’s gates at the top of the hill, they were followed all the way home by a beautiful cream-coloured dog. She was very shy and stayed a few steps behind. When Lorna turned, she would stop and lie down. When she got back to the house the
dog lay down outside and just watched as Lorna brought Carlos back in. Lorna and I took some water out for this ‘New Girl’ and she was very excited and friendly. She jumped up at both of us and laid her head on my chest, staring right into my eyes. She was like a cross between a mastin and a labrador; a really beautiful dog and not in bad shape. We gave her some food but she wasn’t starving; she had been looked after until very recently. Once again, we housed her in the stable and drew up some posters to attach to the fence, this time assuming her owners must be looking for her. As she was so friendly, after a few days we tried to let her interact with the other dogs, but Arthur didn’t like her and at one point jumped on top of her growling and snarling so we stopped that pretty quickly.

  After about a week, an old man whom we had never seen before pulled up his car outside. He was hard to understand but seemed to be talking about the dog, saying it belonged to a friend of his. I went in to get Lorna, and we both agreed that if it was his friend’s dog then he should take her. When we let New Girl out she was nervous and certainly didn’t seem to know him. Then he took out a rope from his car and tied it to the tow bar, attaching it to the collar of New Girl.

  “Whoah, NO!” I said, trying to stop him.

  Lorna had started crying as she didn’t want this beautiful animal dragged behind a car and was by now frantically untying the rope. I told the man to put her in the back of his car; it was only an old van so she wouldn’t harm it. He pulled the front seat forward and forced her in the back. Lorna was still in tears and New Girl was far from happy. I didn’t really know what to do. If she was indeed his or his friend’s dog then, even if I disagreed with his treatment of her, she had a right to be returned home. Then, unbeknown to Lorna, New Girl tried to push past the driver to climb out of the window and he punched her in the head, quite hard too. It was terrible.