No honor among thieves

Things are becoming interesting in La Yacata lately on account of the morals of our neighbors. I’ve already talked about the pig guys, bull terrier and the horse guy (See good fences make good neighbors–unless your neighbor steals it) but there is a new family that moved in what used to be the profe’s house. They have two children and we have had people stopping at our house and asking where the family with the niña enferma or niña mala (sick girl child) live. As we haven’t been invited to be friends, we haven’t been able to ascertain what exactly is wrong with the girl, who seems to be about 2 years old, but she apparently has an illness or health-problem and thus, the family receives some assistance from both DIF and the church.

However, they have been finding it rough going in regards to water. The profe’s house only had a tinaco (water storage tank) which holds 15000 liters of water. The family doesn’t have any vehicles that they can bring water to the house and apparently haven’t any money to ask for water delivery from la presidencia (town hall) (See Water Woes). So the husband has been making free with the water from my husband’s brother’s ajibe (dry well). But that doesn’t give him a place to store the water that he steals, so two days ago, a barrica (barrel) that had been on top of the house on the corner for 5 years, went missing. The owner was livid and marched down to see if we knew anything about it. We could only speculate since the barrica (barrel) wasn’t visible from outside the profe’s house.

This same owner, who is renting to the pig guys, started complaining about the stench of these chicken-intestine eating animals (See Miss Piggy didn’t bring home the Bacon) and my husband suggested he not rent to the pig guys anymore. Apparently seeing the sense in that, he went and waited until the pig guys came to feed their animals, and throw out the daily supply of chicken feathers, and let them have it. We could hear the shouts from our house more than a block away.

The end result was that the pig guys moved their animals to their half-constructed compound up the hill. It doesn’t have any sort of door, so I am not sure how they expect to keep their little piggys from running wild in La Yacata. Then there is the fact that they are right next door to the horse guy, who is known to have sticky fingers. So the pig guys have been camping out in their truck to protect their porcine investment, but I’m sure they will get tired of that soon enough and the horse guy will be frying up bacon before you can say Jack Robinson.

The horse guy also has his own mini-telenovela (soap opera) going on and I wouldn’t be surprised if someone, namely him, gets shot over it. He had been caring for 3 thoroughbred breeding horses while the owner was out of the country for a month and, not to look a gift horse in the mouth, had made free with the maquila (stud service) of said horses during the weeks they were stabled with him. He charged $1,500 pesos for each coupling and hauled them hither and yon raking in the dough. He did this without the knowledge of the owner and naturally kept all the profit himself. The owner, who paid good money for his horses to be fed and watered, also didn’t know that the horse guy fed and watered his own scrawny yegua (mare) first from the feed and left the others to eat the leftovers.

Well, all good things must come to an end. The owner returned from his trip and came and collected the horses. Less than a week after he picked up the horses, one of them up and died. The horse’s estimated value was over $5000 usd or about $50,000 pesos. Angry doesn’t even begin to describe his reaction. He also found out about the illicit breeding activity. The owner came and threatened the bejeezes out of the horse guy, who now comes and goes at odd hours, sometimes walking and leaving his vehicle to throw the hounds off his scent I suppose.

But all in all, I have hope of it working out for La Yacata. Even though we have been accused of being rateros (thieves) (See Rateros–really?) we aren’t and have made no headway of ridding the land of these vermin. After all, it takes a thief to catch a thief and the way things are looking, los ladrones (thieves) will end by eliminating themselves without any help from me.

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