Ribeira Brava is home to numerous dogs and roosters--at 4:47 this morning, about a billion of them.
I've been enjoying crowing at the roosters as we walk to and fro through town, watching their various reactions. A couple have ignored me, but most have glared indignantly about them and, with a sharp BOK, marshalled their scratching hens (usually two or three wives) into an alarmed, clucking group, scurrying around not unlike chickens with their heads cut off. Live, intact chickens are not necessarily smart, although they clearly speak to each other.
I learned to crow by listening to my mother, who sounds so authentically rooster that she was attacked by one she crowed at when she was in the Peace Corps in Brazil. None have yet attacked me, but at least one turned an angry yellow eye on us and huffled menacingly in our direction. We hurried away.
Ribeira Brava, like most towns we've been in here in Cabo Verde, is stone and/or cement block and plaster, and in this case, built in a steep valley of basalt with cobbled stone streets and sparse vegetation; so, essentially, a massive echo chamber.
I assume that half the dogs and roosters we hear in the night are actually echoes. I assume this in part because I've experienced, first hand, a dog getting in a shouting match with his echo: Hoover, on Orcas, used to get into a vicious circle with the dog across the valley. We had to try various distractions to get him to stop barking long enough for his opponent to give up.
But actually a billion dogs and roosters, or just half that number and their echoes, is pretty immaterial in the middle of the night.
one-fingered on my phone
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