Peru Archives - Owl Medicine: Shamanic Healing

Hairless Dog

The other day, I was scrolling through old photos and came upon this one of a hairless dog I encountered in an open-air market in Iquitos, Peru, in 2012. Iquitos is located on the banks of the Amazon River.

One of the things I noticed about Iquitos was the abundance of ownerless dogs running free. Since one rarely encounters them (at least in the numbers I found in many areas of Peru, but especially in Iquitos), I was surprised to find them ubiquitous yet surprisingly unassuming. Apparently they’ve honed their survival skills to sheer perfection, knowing precisely how close to stay to humans to survive (and most, apparently, to be happy), but also how to remain free from ownership.

I found this one to be simply amazing looking.

Another Creature

I should mention, I encountered this creature early in the day, as my friends and I made our way to a dock, where a relatively small craft awaited us to shuttle us up the Amazon to a nature preserve. That visit ended up yielding a rather unexpected encounter with yet another creature, one I’d never heard of before.

It wasn’t my intention to write about that visit tonight. Maybe I’ll save it for another time.

Erp! That sort of violates a tenet I’ve expressed other times discouraging the tendency I sometimes have of hoarding my thoughts and ideas. But you know what? I’m tired and I need to hunt for a photo of that other creature in order to illustrate my post appropriately.

In the meantime, I don’t want to detract from my hairless hound’s moment in the sun. It seems to me, this canine deserves its moment in the sun all by itself. It really was an amazing looking creature – and not the only one that sported this hairless look. I’ll admit I was shocked when I saw my first hairless pup, but this one was by far the most handsome. Or pretty.

I guess it’s all in the eyes of the beholder.

(T+113)

Hummingbird in Cusco, Peru, 2012 – Photo: L. Weikel

First Hummingbird

I’m not sure what came over me this afternoon. I’ll blame it on allergies. There is, after all, an ever-replenishing layer of yellow green pollen coating everything – tabletops, chairs, floors, cars. I have a bottle of Windex and a roll of paper towels at the ready because the air truly is thick with the stuff. And just as the afternoon air seemed to reach critical warmth, my eyes refused to stay open. I leaned against the pillows on the glider and drowsily rode the waves of the wind chimes…until “Bzzzzzzz!” I was jolted from my reverie by the season’s first hummingbird!

In fairness to this newby, I was wearing a neon orange shirt. So mistaking my hulking figure for a tasty and tantalizing nectar station might be excused – or at least might not be as glaring a miscalculation as one might think. Then again, it may not have been a miscalculation at all. If this was indeed a hummingbird returning to its ‘summer home’ from last year, it may have been feeling legitimately off-put by our failure to have a welcome home meal ready and waiting.

Close Encounter

Perhaps I was that in-between state I enter when I’m half asleep, but if I had to swear to it, I would: I felt the air above my head and face being buffeted by the blindingly rapid movement of the hummer’s wings. That’s how close it was to my drowsy countenance.

Needless to say, though, I was unprepared for such an early arrival. So I’m just going to have to make do with a photo from two years ago. Makes me realize that I need to try to snag more shots of these dazzling creatures. I’m chagrined that I only have one photo of our perennial visitors.

Ah! But here’s a bonus. My search for a photo for this post has revealed one I took of a hummingbird that visited me as I sat on a balcony in Cusco, Peru, in February 2012. I visited Peru that month on a quest to heal – or at least dive deep into – my grief over losing Karl only three months earlier.

Early? Late? On Time?

I’m surprised I haven’t mentioned the arrival of the hummingbirds in any other posts. I wonder when my first sighting was last year – or the year before. It’s curious that I’ve not documented (and celebrated) the return of the hummingbirds before this, since I always seem to announce the arrival of peepers.

And I do want to give a shout out to Karl. As soon as he heard I’d been buzzed, he retrieved the cleaned and emptied feeders we stored when the hummers headed south for the winter. I ran out to Giant to purchase a bag of plain white refined sugar (their favorite), which Karl then used to make their nectar.

So who knows? Maybe tomorrow, if I’m very very lucky, my weary little traveler will return. And maybe it’ll even pose for a photo. (Doubt it. But hey, you never know.)