Guinness is Good for you

In Costa Rica, March is the cruelest month. Rather than hearing the first whisperings of spring one begins to notice the creeping presence of an anti-autumn. Grass that has been dying since December slowly begins to grow green, a few trees that have lost their leaves during the long hot summer begin to sprout buds and seem to hold the promise of new life, but accompanying these few glimpses of life are newly darkened skies of obese clouds barely able to shift the constipated weight of the rain dammed up inside them. With the clouds come a relieving coolness that signals the first great migration of insects into the house.

But before this change began I travelled into Corcovado for the second time, and the most notable change were the ticks. But the most exciting thing was stumbling into a tapir! We were coming back from a long hike up and down a serrated ridgeline when we heard the monkeys overhead start screaming. We looked up and saw nothing, so we kept going, and as we came around the standing roots of a massive tree we were about 10 feet from a large bull tapir. He twisted his nose around to sniff at us, and then went back to perusing the dry leaves. We stayed and watched him for at least a half hour, until the monkeys came closer, peeing and throwing branches down at us as they came (luckily we were wearing hats).

The major change that has happened in March is that we have acquired a puppy! We gave a puppy to one of my co-teachers when Malta had a litter, and now that dog has had puppies and we got one. I took him home in my backpack, and he's been mine ever since. The first night I had to bring him into bed with me because he wouldn't stop crying from his basket in the laundry room, but slowly he became accustomed to the house and within a week he was sleeping outside with his grandmother. He is (as can be seen from the picture) mostly black with a little frothy rim of beige, so I decided to name him Guinness. My family considers him to be my dog, starting from when I bought him food and medicine and reinforced by the fact that during my absences in the past month he spend his time moping around the house and scratching on my door. When I am around the house he spends most of his time chewing on my toes, or asleep in my clothes.