Our dog Chica had puppies just around the time Ahmed was born. Sadly, not a single one survived, the last four all died of the same disease before the age of two months, too young to be vaccinated.
		Chica with her puppies on the beach
		Chica herself, a strong dog arriving in Brazil at the age of eight years in good health, apart from a bit of rheumatism from the Nepali winters, picked up a lung problem in Trancoso. She developed a bad cough in our third year in Brazil, and got so ill we had to drive her to a vet in Eunapolis 80 km from Trancoso, who gave her some shots. She rode in our jeep's trailer, and on the way back it was obvious that she was in a serious condition. Back in Trancoso, we drove up to our house and parked in front of it. Chica, still in the trailer, sat up, took a long look around, taking in everything for a last time, and died. The neighbors said she must have held out throughout the ride back so she could die at home. With her, we had lost a very dear family member.
		We buried her in the garden, near a stupa dedicated to Shiva. We later had another dog called Rani later, but she was nothing like Chica.
		another of Chica with two of her puppies
		After I had left Brazil, Rashid got a huge Fila Brasileira he called Chico. Poor dog didn't get very old, it got poisoned, probably by some thieves who saw in it an obstacle to the exercise of their trade.
		Any type of bacteria and fungi thrived in the humid semitropical climate of Trancoso. Athlete's foot was endemic, and on fabrics unremovable gray spots, called 'lice' by the locals, appeared out of nowhere. A lot of our books, inlaid boxes and other items we had brought over from Asia got destroyed by the humidity and by fungi of various colours. So did our negatives.
		In the trees in our garden lived some weird things that didn't even look like insects, or anything alive for that matter, but on being touched burnt the skin with its poison. Once I got a two inch blister after putting on a dress that had been left hanging outside, my kitchen helpers told me that another strange insect must have left his excretion on it.
		Occasionally, huge armies of millions of ants passed through the houses like some black tide, entering from one side and leaving on the other. One just had to get out and wait till they disappeared. Those ants killed lots of cockroaches and other insects they found, so nobody really minded them.
		The worst parasites I came to know in Trancoso were called bichera, the scientific name being myasis. Myiasis is the infection of an animal with fly larvae (maggots). Common in cattle, sheep, and deer, myiasis also occurs in humans, when certain flies are attracted to wounds, where they lay eggs. The hatched maggots then burrow into the skin. Depending on the type of fly, the larvae remain in the flesh and cause lesions.
		My first contact with bichera occurred when I noticed a round hole in Chica's belly. It didn't actually look like a wound, rather like some natural opening. Calling a friend to ask his advice, the fellow produced a bottle of insecticide, poured a few drops of the liquid into the opening, and immediately the head of some fat white maggot peeked out. Together with its cohabitants it was dead in the course of a few minutes and could be removed. When Chica had her puppies, they sometimes had those maggots in their gums. We quickly learned that in Trancoso animals have to be checked thoroughly and frequently for them to stay healthy.
		Kids too, I learned, when on New Years Eve of our first year in Brazil Rashid told me that he felt something strange on his head. I pulled him underneath a street light to take a look, and with horror saw two white maggots wriggling in a small hole in his scalp.
		Meadows with high grass could be so full of ticks that you always got at least a dozen or so from passing through, fortunately I never heard of cases of tick induced infections like Lyme disease in Trancoso.
		Another nasty were Tunga penetrans, commonly known as bicho do pé or sand fleas. The impregnated female Tunga feeds by burrowing into the skin of its host, usually around the toenails. Its abdomen becomes enormously enlarged between the second and third segments so that the flea forms a round sac with the shape and size of a pea. Mercifully the local womenfolk enjoy removing sand fleas from the feet of friends as well as strangers, so my kids never had a problem finding a volunteer when they were afflicted. Myself I hated doing it, it's nauseating. One uses a needle to open the sore and pulls out strings of mucus with the flea's eggs. Eeechhh!
		To pick head lice out of each other's hair also was a local sport that seemed to give quite a lot of satisfaction to the participants, it's a type of socializing I can do without as well, so once again it was OK with me if my neighbors performed that service on my offspring.
		At least there was no Malaria in the vicinity, yet this didn't prevent the government to enforced twice yearly sprayings of all the houses with DDT, an insecticide banned in Europe since the seventies. Only a doctor's attest could prevent your place from getting totally poisoned, otherwise armed military police saw to it that you got your dose of the stuff.
		Then there were vampire bats and snakes galore. On the way to the loo one night I nearly stepped on a coral snake resting on the kitchen floor. Coral snakes belong to the same family as cobras. Despite their small size and small fangs, their venom is extremely toxic.
		Our garden was full of snakes. I hate animals getting hurt, but thinking of my kids and their friends plying on our property, I had to consent to the workers killing any snake they found. Our cats sometimes helped by eating poisonous snakes, without any adverse effects becoming evident.
		Rashid and Zuleika
		One morning as I crossed the village square, which actually just was, and still is, a meadow that also serves as a field for the daily soccer games, I saw a tiny little horse lying in the grass, with some guys looking on. On my asking, they told me that the foal's mother had died some days ago, and the poor little thing probably was gonna follow suit. Not if I can help it, I thought to myself, and next thing I paid the owner around 70 $ for that sorry little creature and led it home. It was a female, and I named her Zuleika. Heeding a neighbor's advice I reared her on a daily bowl of milk with two eggs mixed in. After two weeks she was well and strong enough to roam the village on her own. In her first year she liked to follow me wherever I went, she even tried to enter the grocers along with me when I went shopping.
		When Zuleika was still very small, we sat in front of our place one moonless night, and she rested a few steps away on the grass. Suddenly a car drove up to the house without it's driver noticing the little horse lying on the lawn. He drove right on top of her. Screaming I jumped up and ran in front of the car hollering for the driver to back off, which he did. To our great relief, Zuleika reappeared from under the car, looking somewhat astonished. She'd been exactly between the front tires. It was a miracle she escaped unhurt.
		Time passed, Zuleika grew up and stopped following me around. Though whenever I stood in front of the restaurant calling Fatima, who liked to hang out at the neighbor's place watching TV in the evenings, Zuleika without fault would appear in a fast trot from wherever she'd been grazing.
		While talking to a friend in front of the house one lazy winter afternoon, I noticed a blonde boy on horseback galloping in breakneck speed across the square. There weren't many blondes around apart from my own kids, so I asked her: "Zilda, who the hell is that? If I wouldn't know that Rashid doesn't know how to ride, I'd think it was him". "But of course it's him, on Zuleika", was her answer. I was quite stunned.
		Zuleika with her first offspring
		As soon as we had moved to our own home and opened the restaurant, Zuleika started to enter and steal food from my astonished customer's plates. She was everybody's darling, and well she knew it. One night while working in the kitchen I heard a great commotion and the sound of breaking dishes. I ran to the front, to see Zuleika standing in the middle of the empty restaurant, serenely chomping on some salad leaves. All guests had left, and Zuleika, attempting to finish off the leftovers, caused the plates to fall to the floor and break. She must have been at it for quite some time, as the place was a total mess of broken dishes with food strewn all over.
		After a visit to some garbage dump, Zuleika once came home with her foot stuck in a narrow, 10 inch high empty tin of cooking oil. It took us more than an hour to get it off, that horse could be as stubborn as any donkey, and not understanding what we all were pulling at her leg for, she kicked and fought back.
		When Zuleika was about two years old, something terrible happened: She got raped. Not by a fellow horse, by some sick pervert. She was injured and ill for a few weeks afterwards. Such disgusting incidents occurred frequently around the village. My friend Dora's donkey actually contracted syphilis. It also was common knowledge that some of the locals liked to disport with chickens.
		taking the horses for a bath
		Our own chickens didn't get molested by perverts though. They got killed and partly eaten by an animal called saraué. The chicken coop was at some distance from house and kitchen, in an unlit corner of the garden. At night we'd hear a great commotion, but until we got there the culprit had fled, leaving behind his calling card in form of yet another bloody chicken carcass. On hearing the terrified noises the chickens made when attacked, we'd immediately run through the garden to the chicken coop. Two people were needed: One to hold and point the torch, because it was pitch dark where the chickens slept, and the other to shoot. Usually it took too long to get the gun and the torch and sprint to the scene of the crime. We probably made too much noise as well. Once we got there, we usually found another dead chicken, and no culprit in sight.
		From eleven chickens we were down to only three when we finally managed to shoot their murderer. It was an animal unknown to me, though years later, after a bit of research on the web, I figured it must have been an opossum, a species I wasn't familiar with. Looking like a huge rat, it possessed an immense tail and big round ears. And it stank real badly. Knowing our workers wanted to eat the animal; X left it on a table in the restaurant, where Ahmed and I were going to sleep. Soon a nauseating smell pervaded the room, so I picked up the dead rodent, put it in a plastic bag and threw into in the freezer. Next day our workers were only too pleased to finally get their long anticipated treat. I hope they didn't mind me asking them to please take it away and prepare it somewhere else.
		Within a few weeks the remaining chickens and Rashid's beautiful rooster got stolen one after the other. That put an end to our keeping chickens, it just was too depressing.
		Another pet I lost my heart to was a baby sloth. Locals had killed and eaten its mother, and on its own it had no chance of survival. I carried it around with me folded into my apron during the day, 'cause it cried when left alone, and we forced milk down its throat with a plastic syringe. From our workers we learned that a sloth eats only the leaves of a certain tree, so we sent a boy to collect some. Alas, the little orphan refused to eat, got weaker and weaker, and soon passed away.
		Around the same time, a horrifying incident took place in nearby Ajuda, where a whale got stranded. Now everybody knew it was strictly forbidden to kill whales, nonetheless, when night fell some men approached the poor creature with a chain saw and started to cut lumps of meat out of its living body. Next morning, there was no resort for the authorities but to end the mammal's suffering by putting it to death.
		Because it also was severely prohibited to sell whale meat, the lot of it got distributed for free to all and sundry, my neighbor happily showed me the chunk she'd gotten. The story finally hit the news and somewhat of a scandal developed, but the locals didn't quite understand the hue and cry.
		A few years after I left Trancoso, Zuleika died from heavy colic. Such intestinal commotions are a quite common cause of death for horses where we lived.
		All in all, Trancoso seems to be an adverse place for any type of animal: With the climate, the locals and the parasites combined, the odds for survival are pretty bad.