Doctor

Yesterday before sundown, Ate Malou (my neighbor in her 50s) asked me to verify her bed-ridden mother’s blood pressure because the old woman was shaking.

I went to see the patient free of charge (my standard for my neighbors) and reminded Ate Malou about sublingual anti-hypertensive meds before leaving.

People looked at me as I walked up and down the street hooked to an IV line (which I inserted myself because of LBM).

It was a rare sight for all of us.

- sent to friends as a text message on 1 May 2013

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Living alone made me learn to insert IV lines to myself without any external help.

Reticulatus

At 3 o’clock in the morning, my friend Sir Boy called to inform me a snake had gotten trapped in a fisher’s net.  Boy wanted to know if I would keep the snake as a pet.  Ryan, our mutual friend, fetched and brought me to the snake.  It was a reticulated python a.k.a. retic, native to the Philippines and Asia, and at least 5 feet long (immature; adults grow to more than 10 feet).  Pythons are not venomous.

The net costs thousands of pesos, and the fisher did not want it cut just to remove the snake.  Nobody had touched the snake before my arrival.  The snake would have been difficult to handle if it were not impossibly coiled in the net.

Boy and I tried to disentangle the snake from the net.  The retic never stopped moving, entrapping itself more in the process.

The fisher and the townspeople were clamoring for the python’s head.  Knives were shimmering in the moonlight.

I asked Boy for alcohol.  Boy cut a plastic Coke bottle in half and poured alcohol into it.  I held the head of the snake and dipped it in the alcohol until it died, all the while calling it “baby” and asking for forgiveness.  Boy took the snake after disentanglement, to preserve in formalin and to put on display in school (we call Boy “Sir Boy” because he is a grade school teacher).  I felt bad because I saw the snake as a pet, and probably because my love for animals is greater than my love for humans – this from a duly licensed physician of the Republic of the Philippines.

Sir Boy’s neighbor, the fisher, took a while to raise the money to buy that net.  I feel sad that I chose the livelihood of a fisher over the life of a snake.  It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.  I went to the scene to get a pet.  I had no idea I would be performing serpenticide (or euthanasia depending on how one looks at it).

I could not let the fisher and the spectators cut the retic into pieces.  Let the poor serpent rest in peace, not in pieces.  I just hope that the option I provided was humane.

14 August 2014

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The incident happened in Barangay Nagbalon in the Municipality of Marilao in the Province of Bulacan on noted date.

In Transit

At Baliwag Manok Lechon Liempo beside Super8 in Meycauayan there was a handsome Moreno employee.  Moreno went out of Baliwag and sat by the side of the road near an Old Man who was smoking.  It seemed like Moreno unloaded his angsts to Old Man.  After a while, Old Man wiped something away from Moreno’s lips using his left thumb.  H’m.  The public utility jeep moved away, so I was not able to see what happened next.

19 January 2013

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We, Filipinos, usually think of roasted pig when we hear the word lechon.  However, lechon manok or roasted chicken became popular not so many decades ago; so, we now see quite a number of food stores selling lechon manok like Baliwag Manok Lechon Liempo.

Liempo is pork belly.

Super8 is a chain store like Walmart.

Meycauayan is a city in the Province of Bulacan.

Moreno is a loanword, from Spanish, that means dark.