I shared this story about our chickens with a few friends the other day. You see, we got home from our Semana Santa trip (still working on that post), and had dinner with our family. We asked them how our chickens were doing and they told us they were dead, hahaha. Everyone in the room smiled and laughed. That’s our host family, very sarcastic. 🙂 Our chickens were alive and well since they take good care of everything for us.

Lina asked us, “Who’d you buy the chickens from?” We told her the name of our chicken vendor, who we know is also a family cousin that lives up the road. “Ahhh,” Lina said, working something out in her head. “Well, while you were gone your chicken spent a lot of time at Manuel and Lina’s house (the notorious Manuel with a wife of the same name as our story teller), and she says your chicken is actually hers that was stollen a few days before you two got your chickens.” I felt a litte sad about this, like someone was going to try and reposses one of our chickens after we’d spent some time taking care of them and getting them used to living with us. “She says she knows her chicks and that one is definitely hers.” So I explained to Lina, that it could be possible, but we’d paid for these chickens when they were just chicks and had waited a month before collecting them, so I didn’t really think they were stolen. “Well it could be that someone stole her chicken and sold it to Maria who sold it to you and no one even knew it was stolen.” I told her, yes, that was possible, but probably the best way for this to be worked out was for Lina to talk directly to Maria, as the two of them could communicate better without Jaime and me in the middle. They all agreed that sounded reasonable, and we left it at that.

Ladrones are always a problem here, that is, thieves. About a month ago an ax we’d been using to chop firewood and leaving outside our house disappeared. The family asked us to be more careful about using their tools and storing them when we were done because ladrones always take things around here. We felt a little bad about being irresponsible with their things. Our host family eats in shifts so that someone is always on this side of the cornfield near our house and the house where most the family sleeps in case any ladrones should show up. The kitchen and sink for clothes and dish washing are just through the cornfield a ways, but a ladron could slip in and out unnoticed if we left things unattended. While constructing the greenhouse we were again reminded to store the tools in our house for as long as we needed to use them so no one stole them. There is a big fear around here of the damage a ladron can do.

So today, Fletch walked in the house laughing, “Well, we solved some ladrones mysteries this morning. One, the ax that disappeared last month, they found it on the roof of the house. Nas put it there for some reason and forgot about it; nobody else knew where it was until they found it on accident today. And Lina’s chicken, found dead smashed under a beam in Petrona’s new house. Mystery solved.” Note: Petrona’s house is still under construction, so no people have been hurt by falling beams. We thought maybe these ladrones claims were largely exaggerated, but took measures in part erring on the side of caution and in part so the family would not tell us a million times more about ladrones.

I’ve had the feeling people are often their own ladrones, but they’ve got so little they really don’t like losing things. Maybe ladrones is another example of evading personal responsibility, which we’ve mentioned before? Maybe, maybe not. Today we just feel a little vindicated, and ain’t nobody takin’ our chickens. I just hope ours stay out of the way of falling beams.