Rochester and the Alien Zoo

        When I was a young man, I had a beautiful black dog named Rochester. He was a pure black, 90 pound shepherd labrador mix with pointed ears, a huge tail and a great personality. He was obedient and very intelligent. Whenever I would call him, he would come.

We like to go out to the West Mesa during sunset, sit on the sand dunes and watch the beautiful colors in the New Mexico sky. From the sand dunes you could look across the valley and see for miles. Rochester liked to run into the valley.

        He would run down the dune, across arroyos, around cactus and up hills. As he ran, he would become smaller and smaller until he was only a dot in my eyes. Then I would stand up and call,

“ROCHESTER!”

My voice would echo across the valley and Rochester would turn around and come running back. He would get bigger and bigger until he was right on top of me! Panting and slobbering from his long run.

        One day as we were watching the sunset, Rochester ran into the valley. He became smaller and smaller and then, suddenly, he disappeared! I called for him.

“ROCHESTER!!”

He did not reappear!! This worried me because Rochester always came when I called.

I began walking down the sand dune, across the arroyos, and around the cactus. I could easily follow Rochester's trail in the sand. I climbed and hill and from the top, looked down into a basin. In the middle of the basin was a huge saguaro cactus. This was truly strange, Saguaro cactus don't live in New Mexico. Intrigued, I walked up to the cactus and saw that Rochester's trail stopped right there. It seemed as if the only place he could be was in the cactus. It was very quiet, I heard a whimper! It was coming from the cactus.

        As I walked around the cactus, I noticed a spot on the ground where Rochester's footprints stopped. I gave the cactus a kick close to that spot and a creaking noise began and a door began to swing open. I got down on my hands and knees to peer into the cactus. Sure enough, there was Rochester, curled up inside the cactus. He was frightened, so I crawled forward to comfort him. As soon as I was inside, the door slammed shut! BANG!

Now, I was trapped inside with Rochester. Before I had much time to think about what this all meant, the cactus began to shake. It shook harder and harder then it took off. It wasn't a cactus at all, it was a rocket ship! We flew for quite a while, then it reversed direction, landed and the door opened.

        I looked outside and saw that the sky was green and the ground was blue. Circling the ship were hundreds of tiny yellow men with lots of tall orange hair. They were holding spears, jumping around and making a weird noise thats sounded something like cats ready to fight.

Rochester and I crawled out the door and stood up. The tine men were smaller than Rochester and seemed to pointing their spears toward a path as they jumped around and made their weird noises.

        "Well, Rochester," I said, "Maybe we better walk on this path."

        That is what we did. The tiny yellow men surrounded us as we walked up and down hills, around big rounds and finally into a cave. The path in the cave circled and twisted and it went down and down. Soon we enter a huge cavern, filled with thousands of yellow men jumping around and making their weird noises. At the end of the cave was a huge yellow man, with tall orange hair, sitting on a throne with a crown upon his head. When he spotted us entering the cave he motioned for us to come closer. As we approached the throne the tiny men noticed us and began laughing and pointing at us. The huge yellow man began to bellow, point and laugh until there were tears in his eyes. When he could finally recovered from his hysterical fit, he pointed toward a huge door and nodded to the tiny men who had led us to the cave.

        They immediately began to push us toward the door. The door opened and we entered another huge cavern. This cavern was filled with cages hanging from the ceiling. Inside the cages were the strangest critters I had ever seen. There were purple blobs with eyestalks all over their bodies, green triangles with a multitude of eyes, transparent spheres with colored balls filling their insides. They were aliens from other planets. I suddenly realized that Rochester and I were aliens and they were going to put us in one of the cages to be specimens in their zoo!

Soon we were in a cage hanging from the ceiling and I was wondering what my Mom would do if I didn't make it home for dinner. As I worried about my future, Rochester began sniffing all around the cage. His tail began to wag very fast and he began eating the bars of the cage. These tiny men might have been able to make a saguaro cactus into a rocket ship, but they didn't know that dogs love milk bones and that is what they used to make the cage. Rochester ate a hole big enough for us to jump out.

        Now we were running down a path trying to escape. I looked ahead and sight a small light at the end of the path. We ran faster but soon we were being chased by the tiny yellow men. They were making their weird noises and throwing their spears at us. They felt like pins jabbing my legs as they hit me. The light at the end of the path grew larger, but I was exhausted from running and my legs ached from all the spears that had hit them. I told Rochester to go ahead and escape. But, he turned and faced the hoard of tiny men chasing us.

        Have you ever smelled a dog's breath? It can be pretty rotten. Rochester opened his mouth and hissed his breath all over the tiny men. They fell to the ground, began moaning and wiggling all over the ground. Rochester's breath was a weapon of mass destruction!

We turned, ran to the light, jumped out the cave and ran to the cactus. I kicked the door open, we jumped in and the cactus took off.

        Soon we were back home, eating dinner. I have always been reluctant to share this story, because I am sure there are those who will never believe me.

The Blue Goose

 originally written March 14, 2019

    One of the most amazing places our family was lucky enough to experience was a blue apparition in the Atacama Desert.  It was a collection of living spaces, tents, and metal structures at the crossroads of the Pan American Highway and the turn off to Toquepala which began climb of 8500 feet into the Andes mountains.  It was also a place for the police to stop vehicles to check for something, even if they knew you had nothing.  They might be looking for illegal immigrants, drug activity or maybe they just wanted to harass someone.  The Atacama desert is the second driest desert in the world and the Blue Goose was the name of this hot spot on the ribbon of road cutting through a landscape with the Andes mountains towering over the land to the east and vast stretches of sandy desert running north and south along the coast of the Pacific Ocean to the west.  Vegetation was sparse to non-existent.

    LaWanda and I were working as teachers in Toquepala, the site of a large open pit copper mine 8000 feet above the  blue goose in the Andes Mountain. We lived in pleasant house with our two preschool aged children, close to the school where we worked.  The Blue goose was the first sign of civilization after leaving the mine after driving west for two hours.  The descent was steep causing the road from the mine to twist and turn as the flat plains came closer and closer.  There were spectacular views of the mountains and deserts interspersed with dangerous curves that drew your attention back to the road.  Arriving at the Blue Goose one would turn right and head straight up the coast to New Mexico, if you had a lot of time.  If you turned left the road cut across the Moqueqa Valley and into Tacna the major city of southern Peru, with 5000 inhabitants.  Tacna was a short drive from Arica, Chile, a coastal city where there had been no recorded rainfall and a statue of Bernardo O’Higgins represented the proud heritage of Chileans.

    Our family was frequently stopped at the Blue goose when returning from Tacna.  The police were neither friendly nor hostile, but there was always a sense that they meant business and that being a foreigner was a liability.  My favorite place to stop within the boundaries of the blue goose was a small gas station at the southern end of the habitations.  It was obviously as gas station because there were two gas pumps out front, a covered area over the pumps and a small rectangular building.  When you pulled up to the pumps all you could see was desert to the south, west and east.  The most interesting part of the gas station was that after pulling up to a pump you had to go into the building and the attendant would pour about 5 gallons of gasoline into container from a metal barrel in the office.  Then you would carry the gas out to your car and put it into the the gas tank.

    During one trip I was pouring gas into the tank of my Brazilian Volkswagon, while LaWanda and the kids dozed in the heat.  I was staring at the void that was the desert when, through the shimmering heat waves, I spotted an emerging man with a donkey.  My thought, was de donde vine?  There was no civilization in that direction.  The figure kept walking toward the highway and eventually I could discern that it was an elderly man with a long goatee wearing a wide brimmed hat with a serape thrown over his shoulder.  He looked like a Mexican Paisano not a Peruvian Indian.  He kept walking, his donkey following heading right for the highway.  They crossed the road and keep walking into the desert and I watched him until he could no longer be seen.  

    I have often thought of that man and his donkey and wondered where he came from and where he was going.  As far as I knew the Blue Goose was right smack dab in the middle of nowhere.  He probably knew a lot more about what was out there than I will ever know or perhaps can imagine.  Although I can try. 

Peru was a wonderfully strange place!