San Pedro should never have gotten away. It has, and our authorities say that contact tracing is of little value now because the disease has spread to too many people. It has gotten so bad in San Pedro that the authorities have cramped the fishing. The story is that only licensed fisher folk are allowed to go to sea, and they can’t go farther than the reef. I read that on the 7News script.

We can do better than that; we have to. This is a time when people need the best food, and all the doctors say fish is good to build up our immunity, so the people have to fish. I wouldn’t insist on a license. There are a lot of folk who can handle themselves on the sea but they don’t own a boat. Maybe they have a good friend who is willing to be a real Good Samaritan (not a bad one like Lord Ashcroft who got this unbelievably good deal from us for the BTL he should never have been allowed to own), and maybe the friend gets ahold of fishing gear too, and bait. All we need to ensure is that all the people on board the boat live in the same house. Let the people fish.

Ah, time, people cannot get back, and spilt milk people cannot get back either, so we really have to step up our game to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

We are called to follow all the recommended safety measures, and when we get sick our authorities are to step in and nip it in the bud. One of the best tools they have is to find all our contacts and test them, and inform them to step away from other folk for a while.

This tool called contact tracing, for it to work it needs the cooperation of persons who have been infected. A report I read, from the US, said that researchers found that in New Jersey 50% of infected people refused to share their contacts. Oh no, no, no! Here is the reason why our contact tracers are getting sick. They are interacting with intransigent people.

We know why some people won’t talk. Some are ignorant, a few are malicious (want others to get sick), and some have reasons. Those who have reasons, there is a way to get them to talk without applying Gestapo tactics.

It might be preferable that contact tracers not live in the areas where they do this job. At the least contact tracers should be made to swear an oath, with penalties equal to that legislated for border jumpers. Contact tracing is an essential tool. No city or town should get away from us again. People who refuse to talk must get the ultimatum: reveal all your contacts, or be revealed.

Going too far

According to the little information I have, we are the animal that was gifted with the biggest brain, but we are the waste masters of the world and we like to du fool. We can’t get enough of anything, be it good or be it bad. See the cows in the pasture. See the cows eat. See the cows under a shade tree chewing their food properly so they get the most nutrients possible out of the grass, so there isn’t waste.

Okay, cows and other ruminants are known to have bloat, bad stomach ache, sometimes. Bloating can be caused by the type of feed we give our ruminants or by a physical problem, but it’s never because of the crime against earth called gluttony. We are the only animal that doesn’t know when to get our behinds away from the dinner table.

When I was a youth going to school in Belmopan my dad bought several pounds of rabbit meat from 4H and my mom cooked it up. I loved it. I think we had rabbit stewed one day, and on a glorious Saturday afternoon we had the carne de conejo cooked over hot coals. Hmm, I loved it. I only eat the meaty part of chicken; rabbit tastes like chicken, but every part is meat, meat, meat. I thought I’d eat rabbit forever.

Then one day I read Watership Down and I lost the lust for bunny rabbits, fried. Seriously, I won’t eat rabbit, but if you’re not a sensitive type, I think it would be a great backyard meat source, because those little bohgaz are prolific, they eat scraps, and they grow quick like bamboo. Ai, if they weren’t the stars of so many stories, and weren’t so cuddly, like very young sheep.

Jerry Enriquez’s dad was some kind of brilliant to notice how the Cowboy movies cemented the Indians as the murderous villains in the minds of little ones. I must have been slower when I was a boy, slower than I am now, because I was a fertile field for the propaganda. I was no matinee hound, but what I saw at the Palace and the Majestic and the Eden was enough to brainwash little me thoroughly. On Kiddies Corner on the radio there was this song, “My Brave Little Cowboy”, which was about how one brave little boy shot down countless Indians to protect himself and his mother until the hero cavalry arrived. That song, oh how I prayed for the cavalry to come on the scene.

I don’t know why my younger brother, Ronald, and my cousin Dave the Dude, two matinee buffs, were Indian lovers when the stories in those movies were so one-sided. Those little boys, maybe they were rebels.

Okay, let’s get to it; it’s fair for animal lovers to sell their sob stories, but someone has to rein them in when they start pushing pigs as worthy of our sympathy. These stories that try to show how intelligent these animals are, are designed for their ulterior purpose. They should go to Asia and lecture about the virtues of dogs.

This story about North Korean president, Kim Jong-un, stealing the children’s puppies, it’s a nausea- maker. That young man Jong-un noh tu understand. He should be made to watch Quo Vadis. Remember when Petronius told the philistine Nero to continue his rampage and rape, his murder and carnage, but please to leave the arts alone?

This Kim Jong-un, I heard that recently he was about becoming a saint, that he had lost his ambition to blow up South Korea, a terrible thing, and the United States, which would be a worse thing because poor lee we would be the, ehm, collateral damage from the fallout or a misdirected missile.

They say that the poor in Jong-un’s North Korea keep pigs in their yards, I hope not as pets, and the pampered rich keep pooches. So, to bring the hats of the rich down a peg, and to satisfy a food shortage, Jong-un is rounding up the dogs and putting them down, for meat. This is intolerable. I say to that young man, bomb the blank out of your enemies, put to firing squad all insurgents, and take away the dogs of the rich, to spite them, but it’s a sin to turn them into meat.

These animal lovers, someone should tell them that pushing pigs as thinkers is going too far. Even if pigs are smart, it would be ridiculous for us to love them, because they don’t love us. We’ve all heard the stories about droves of waari chasing a hunter up a tree, and for every story we heard about that, there is one about pigs eating farmers.

Pigs are greedy, savage beasts with a lazy look that could lull one into thinking that they are harmless. They are not. They are our enemies, and it is their tough luck that they eat good. Spare the rabbits. Love the dogs, because they are man’s best friends. Cats look like they are all gristle. Think before eating the others. Keep pigs out of this. That is going too far.

Whoa, anybody know weh really happen in the forest behind Maya Center? The story said the waari were dropping by the dozen.