Walking down the dirt road, I saw two black hawks soaring above, their broad-winged silhouettes circling. Then as I reached the crest of the hill I caught a whiff in the moist jungle air – just enough to experience heightened alertness and disgust. And there it was, limbs splayed, ants crawling over its face, eyes gone already. As I later learned from a field guide at home, the motionless corpse was that of a Western Night Monkey. Dead from a misadventure caused by swinging on an overhead electric cable. The monkey was about the size of a small dog, but a primate nonetheless. Over the next four days (it was the only way to get to-and-from the house) I saw the steady work of insects and scavengers reducing it to a furry lump with fangs until it was entirely gone.
If a place teems with life forms, as El Valle does, it stands to reason that death will be equally abundant and varied.
The potential and realities of no-longer-living cross your mind much more here. I have thought about the humble malarial mosquitos whose bite once killed hundreds of thousands in central America (and still do in Africa). More fanciful imaginations lead you down a morbid garden path where local vipers can strike at your bare calf as you hike past. One morning I found a small scorpion in the cats’ water dish. And as for cats, the three domestic hunter-killers in my care leave a steady trail of victims, and not just moths with shredded wings. There was the large, baroquely eviscerated rat at the front door, the dismembered frog in the kitchen, the stunned, doomed gecko trying to escape the living room. I get to clean that up. A few weeks back, at the town’s spay and neuter clinic, I helped bring in a stray dog. She had a broken leg, was covered in sores and stank horribly. The vet took one look and prepared the injection.
And what of people?
No deaths to report, but I’ve got the next best thing; a conversation with Dave, an affable retired funeral director from Wisconsin. Over beers at the Hotel Campestre he regaled us with tales from the undertaking business. His key takeaway; decomposition begins with the last breath, which he dramatically illustrates with a deep inhalation. The next week at yoga, flat on my back in savasana (corpse) pose, the teacher gently intones “Breathing is the first thing you do when you are born, and the last thing you do when you die.”