So, as I’ve mentioned before, we have a lot of farm animals about. Some of the funnier ones are the sheep, or kalnel in the local lingo. Our neighbor Nas Palas has some in a pen up the hill, and I went to check them out. Here’s a picture of their pen yesterday. Baaaaa!!!

That was yesterday. Today we found out that disaster struck; four of them died today from unspecified causes. They suspect a disease, but we don’t really have the technology here to know for sure WHICH disease, so vaccinating the rest is out. It sucks for Nas and his family, because they are expensive (200q each) and edible.

UPDATE: It now appears that they might have been victims of envidia, this sortof envy-on-steriods that lurks in the dark corners of Guatemala. You know… if your neighbors have too darn many sheep and are too rich for their own good, you can bring ’em down a notch by poisoning the flock. That’ll teach ’em. But hey, things are improving: in the 80’s, envidia meant you claimed your neighbor was a communist sympathizer, and the army showed up the next day and burned his house down (with the family in it).