El Camino

The shadow of the dog that bit me.

On the roof a house on the way into town lives this enormous pit-bull-looking dog. It’s locked up there and gets its kicks barking at passers-by. I took the picture above several months ago, when it was safely up a story and behind a fence.

This was not the case last week, when I was heading to Cafe Via Mil (a favorite hangout of Mayatan maestros due to it’s WiFi). There was a bunch of traffic on the street, trucks and tuk-tuks whizzing by in the randomness of Honduran traffic patterns. I finally saw the dog when it was about five feet in front of me. At that moment, I thought, “Is that that huge dog from the roof on the hill?” At that same moment the dog thought, “Is that that gringo I’ve been meaning to bite for months?” Then it bit me in the arm and I smacked it in the face. And that was it. It continued on it’s way up the hill, and I continued on my way down, taking a pitstop at a friend’s house to wash off my arm. Luckily the dog didn’t bite nearly as hard as it could’ve, barely breaking my skin. And of all the dogs of Copan this one, in a strange way, is a better one to have bite you. The street dogs are all so scraggled and sick that you consider an arm amputation a reasonable preventative measure.