...... or "No Shiney you can't use this article as an excuse either!"
The rains have arrived in my back yard bringing with it a lot of strange behavioral patterns.
For the humans “Monsoon Denial” is what Sao Joao is all about– that’s when you’re supposed to assume that because the weather is nice most of the time, it would be nice all of the time, and so in the middle of a rainstorm, you’ll find people outdoors without an umbrella, wearing a tank top and boxer shorts.
I’m not referring to the pool parties where everyone turns up plastered or stoned or both, and gets thrown into a swimming pool flavoured with essence of pee;
nor am I referring to the Siolim riverside show where Mickey, Agnelo, Pasquale and
Anton (dressed in drag) who are basically the same bunch of drunk old guys, plan furiously for their annual float ride down the river, the theme of which this year was “Patriotism by Killing the Terrorist” (mainly because that had been the theme for the Carnival parade and they still had the decorations).
What I AM talking about is animal and bird sex. For one there are the huge pigeons that live on the water tank at the top of the staircase. I have always been leery of these flying rodents ever since New Years Eve in 2007. I was trying to get the fairy lights strung up on the banister and it was way too hot even in the shade. So I decide to pour a beer into a tiki mug and before I can sip it I hear a plop, and see a grayish white dollop of pigeon poo splash down on top of the foam, float, and then slowly titanic its way to the bottom. It was an otherwise lazy quiet afternoon really, peaceful except for the flutter of those creepy birds on the uppermost railing. I hurled abuse at them but they just hung there like big, obnoxious, grey, fat, feather-turds, blinking their eyes like "Do you freakin' MIND?" It was their accusatory look that got me. The impudence!!
So today, when there were FOUR of them in the tree having such vicious sex that I could not siesta, I took action. I got the garden hose and held it as high over my head as I could, and put my thumb on the end of it to make it spray really hard, and water-blasted their crude behavior right out of the tree. They took off for parts unknown and stray feathers floated to the ground like cigar ash. I felt vindicated and empowered.
I sat down and enjoyed the quiet and wholesomeness.
Then they zipped back into the tree, wet but unfettered, and resumed their positions.
For the last couple of days there has been an abundance of sex in our backyard. There are two squirrels that are especially into it. For the first time in my life, I saw two squirrels having sex. (And then a second time, and then a third.) Most people have probably seen this by the time they're middle-aged. I was on the phone with Indu, looking outside, when the two squirrels were banging like there was no tomorrow. I didn't know they were squirrels, just this grey shivering lump with stripes, and only found this out when I described it to Indu. She knows her squirrels.
“Don’t you know I have a whole menagerie of pets in my house?” she says to me, “I know.” 
But back to those yammering pigeons. After they had finished with their jackhammering, they did this little ring-a-ring-a--roses dance, all wings and speed, only it was more of an "Oh-my-gosh-we-just-had-sex-I-canNOT-believe-it!" dance. It was at lightning speed, around and around in circles, so that I lost track of which bird had been on top during the freak show.
And come nightfall there’s the yawling of the cats, I shine a light into the shrubbery but all I see is 4 shiny eyes, or they could be leopards for all I know. And all around them there are these fireflies with tiny lights shining out of their butts; providing atmosphere to an otherwise bizarre and eerie romance.
Normally I would not be very concerned with which cat was which. But I was this time. Why? Because as soon as they stopped caterwauling one of the cats bit and clawed the HELL out of the other's neck. The back of the neck. bitebitebitebitebiteclawclawclawclawclaw. Really hard. And I want to know, cat experts, was it the female mauling the male? Or the male mauling the female? Indu’s theory is that it was the male telling the female the feline equivalent of "Slam bam thank you m'am" or just "Good girl!" But I'm not convinced. Could it have been the female pummeling the male in a "You never buy me jewelry!" kind of way?
