Animal Farm

I've spent a lot of time talking about the people in my Bagar life, because people are important and I like them. But I am completely ignoring the animal kingdom, and this is not correct. So, a remedy.

Ants:

Let's start small. Ants. They made a movie about them once, cutely (and cleverly!) titled ANTZ, and Jerry Seinfeld or someone personified these ants, and after that, we humans were supposed to realize that ants have feelings too, dammit! and we should respect that. I like ants. Correction- I used to like city ants, for whom life is rather bourgeoisie, seeing as there is leftover food everywhere, making for easy pickins. It's also easy to kill city ants when they invade your West Philly apartment, with magic potions and paid exterminators and such. And then I came to Bagar. To be fair, my first introduction to desert ants was a giant anthill that had somehow formed at the foot of my bed, greeting me at 2AM our first night here. From there, the relationship could only, quite literally, go downhill.

I successfully swept away the anthill, sprayed our entire room and my bed with Deet 99%, and assumed the worst was over. I clearly need to stop making assumptions in India, or assume the completely opposite of what I initially want to assume, because I keep getting things wrong. On the ant side of life, things were tame for a while. There was nary an ant in our room; they had all migrated to the kitchen and tripled in size. The kitchen ants look more like mini tarantulas, and since GDL has a strict veg diet, that means we can't kill the ants. That are in our kitchen. Eating our food. I find this counter-productive, because we have each eaten about fifty ants at this point, which is very much not vegetarian, so it would be easier to kill them in the first place. No one else seems to follow my radical branch of logic, so the ants in the kitchen remain.

Where my school of thought is allowed, is in my bedroom, where the ants have returned with a vengeance. See, a while back, Meg's mom sent her this package, stocked with goodies like Pringles and Gummi Bears and Swedish Fish and other delicious preservatives. It's important to remember that all these things were stored in their unopened package, which were in zipped ziploc bags, which were all in a box, tightly closed under a bed. The other day I came into our room and a carpet of ants greeted me, all diligently marching towards Eden. These are not normal ants. These are desert ants, hardened by a lack of food and heat and a very demanding Queen Ant, and possibly a centuries-old rivalry with neighboring ant tribes. Somehow, these ants managed to get inside the sealed Pringles can (which has TWO seals) and were gorging themselves literally to death. Little tiny ants were resting in peace, having eaten more sour cream and onion crisps then their little tiny tummies knew what to do with. It was rather depressing. We were really looking forward to eating those chips.

Dogs:

I've travelled to a couple of developing countries, and the animal that roams in the streets is most often the cat. Surprisingly, I have seen only one or two cats here in India, instead, the streets are filled with dogs. Not Air Bud and Beethoven type of dogs, but mangy, scrawny, dirty dogs that usually look half-alive. A Penn student who had come to Bagar a couple years ago warned me about the dogs.

"Watch out for the dogs," she cautioned. "They chase you a lot. And they're not safe dogs; they're probably rabid."
"Charming," I replied. "Were you ever chased by a dog?"
"Oh yeah," she said nonchalantly. "Once I was walking to the market and a dog started chasing me, growling really loud and stuff."
"What did you do?" I asked, on the edge of my seat.
"I ran to someones house, knocked on the door and explained the situation, and they let me in," she said.
"But I don't know any Hindi!" I said, hysterical at the thought of contracting rabies.
"Oh don't worry," she said. "Just point to the dog and they'll know."

Great. When I went to Student Health to get my vaccines, I was tempted to ask for the five-part installment of the rabies vaccine, but my doctor assured me that if I were to get bit by a dog, I would know, and I would have ample time to get to the hospital. Then I got to Bagar, and realized that most of the dogs are too lazy from the heat to do anything besides flop over on their sides and generally look sad. My favorite dog is one that doesn't have any hair left, but somehow his splotches have darkened parts of his skin. The rest of him is covered in pimply pink skin. I like to call him Proactiv, but I've never actually gotten close enough to him to coo that to him while scratching behind his ears.

Thus far, the saddest thing I've ever seen in India has been dog-related. I was waiting for the bus in some village (I forget the name now) with Deepak. Pankaj and Sahil had gone off to get cold drinks, probably. Across the street, I saw a dog who had his back legs, but could not use them. He was dragging himself across the cement, supported only by his front legs, his hind legs two useless sticks that were chafed and burning in the 120 degree heat. He was moving unbearably slowly, with only the sheer determination of survival. I whimpered and pointed this out to Deepak.

"Yes," he responded. And then, so matter-of-fact: "Handicapped."

I shouldn't have laughed, but I did.

Peacocks:

India's national bird is the peacock! Isn't that cool? We got stuck with the eagle, which, while majestic is often bald, and India gets the peacock. And they can fly- I always thought peacocks were like vain penguins. Yesterday, we went to Hot n' Cold Paradise for some Mountain Dew Mocktails, and up in a tree was a giant peacock, screeching the most terrifying sounds I have ever heard. Beautiful things, but can hardly carry a tune. Not unlike if Ashlee Simpson was stuck in a tree, singing "Invisible" without the help of a computer.

Cows:

Vacca, bovine, vache, kuh. Cows are all over the place in India. They stroll down streets on their way to work, nudge people out of the way at markets to get the best produce, drop the kids off at school, and generally act like they run this place. Which they kind of do. Cows are a very holy animal in Hinduism, which means they get the right of way in every situation. The bus won't slow down for a human crossing the street (you better run!) but if a cow happens to waddle across the road, the bus driver is obliged to fiddle with his stick shift and slow down the car.

I have one funny cow story, but it's not exactly G-rated, so don't stay tuned if you can easily visualize the written word. A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting in the bus with Harsh, coming back from Jhunjhunu. The bus was parked in the marketplace, and the driver was outside smoking consecutive cigarettes, so we weren't about to move anytime soon. Right outside of my window, there was a gathering of doe-eyed young cows, and some muscly, beefy bulls. The girl cows were being all girly and coy in the middle of the marketplace, nuzzling each other and sniffling through the dirt and whatever it is that cows do. The bulls were horny. Off in the distance, they eyed these girl cows.
"Yo man, that Bella has gotten really, really hot. Mmm, that ass," Edward whispered to Jacob.
"No way man, Veronica is so much hotter. And I hear she's really easy. Javier from Sultana hooked up with her last week," Jacob responded.

Meanwhile, the girl cows were hardly paying attention to any of it. They were just doing their cow thing! Having some girl talk! Chatting about this and that and Foucault and ferns. Then the bulls came over. Edward came first, he was more of a pusher. No, that's not true. He's a protector. It's not his fault that he's a glittery vampire bull who LOVES Bella so, so much, but she's a human cow, see, and they just can't possibly be together, at least not in that way, until he turns her into a glittery vampire and oh, my, young love is just so very, very complicated. The events that followed would give Mormon Stephanie Myers a coronary. I felt not unlike a teacher at a high school dance, watching two kids grinding in a devastatingly embarrassing way, but Ms. Krazinsky can only sit and watch in horror, unless it's a Catholic school. I knew I shouldn't look, but I honestly couldn't look away. Luckily, Bella and Edward did this weird scrampy dance thing that shot them straight out of my view, and I could begin some personal therapy lessons. The funniest part about this whole debaucle was that I seemed to be the only person who noticed anything.