OWLS, MINIBUSES, WHITE LADIES, & BICYCLING

There are many beautiful things within this tropical paradise. Last year, I discovered an owl scale at Diana’s house and her family was all confessed that they had never seen an owl and doubted if there were any in the entire Philippines. Of course, that provided me a challenge and I quickly raced back to my cottage and researched it on the internet.  There were in fact a couple different breed of owls in the islands, but to my dismay, I never saw one…until the other day.

I was walking down Segovia Street when I was informed a resident had an owl living with their roosters. I walked over to a bamboo enclosure and sure enough a Grass Owl was tethered inside with two roosters.  Of course the roosters gave him space just as the owlet was happy to separate itself from them.  Its face reminded me of Barn Owls in the States and found the feathers to be quite similar in design to the Barn Owl too.

OK, the Grass Owl resides throughout the Philippines (or so the books say).  It does not roost in trees, but hides within dense thickets of brush and grass. It only hunts in the twilight or nighttime hours. Its main source of nourishment is rodents. 

As I stood just inside the enclosure to get a few good shots, it tilted its head and chirped at me in a curious way. The owner told me that someone had found it and he had bought it. In a way, I truly felt sorry for a creature born to fly freely over the land in search of food.  Being fed meat in a dish was not living for that feathered fowl and I actually departed with some sadness in my heart.  Some animals were never meant to be caged. 

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Yesterday around noon a minibus missed a very shallow or slight curve and crashed into a deep ravine.  There were forty passengers within a transport built for a thirty-five.  A pregnant woman and her eight year old son perished in the crash, along with many who were severely injured. All of the injured were transported fifty miles to hospitals in Bacolod. The bus driver stated to police that he had seen “the white lady” (ghost) and swerved to avoid hitting her.  The authorities figured the thirty year old driver was either traveling too fast with an overloaded bus or fell asleep behind the wheel.  He did miss the concrete bridge railing by an inch or so, but not the tree on the other side of the foliage filled chasm. 

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 The “White Lady” in the Philippines – In many countries, including the United States, there has been stories about the “White Lady” and the Philippines was no different.  When I was stationed here in the mid 70s, I heard of the “White Lady” or “Headless Lady” in Zambales Province.  It was believed that if you saw either one of those apparitions, your time on this earth was short and your demise would be gruesome.  However the most notable story about the “White Lady” was the one on Balete Drive in Quezon City.  . It is said that it was a ghost who appeared as a long-haired woman in a white dress. According to legend, she was driving in Balete Drive when she crashed her car resulting in her death. Most of the stories that have come out about her were told by taxi drivers working the graveyard shift. In other instances it’s been said that when solitary people drove by Balete Drive in the wee hours of the morning, they tended to see the face of a woman in white in the rear view mirror for a split second before the apparition disappeared. Some accidents on this road have actually been blamed on the White Lady.

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Ten days ago, I started riding down that stretch of highway where the accident occurred yesterday.  Since resuming my physical exercise (or early demise, whichever you feel might be appropriate) I had come to some new conclusions about the highways and traffic in the Philippines. Although I had truly felt for a long time that motorcyclists were an inconvenience to cars and trucks and that those four or more wheeled vehicles would just as soon drive you off the road or run you over as to show any form of courteous consideration, I had discovered a different side in regard to bicycles. Except for one sugar cane truck who forced me off the road as it passed a slower vehicle, the remainder (especially buses) were more than accommodating to my tortuous plight.  If anything (including another motorbike) was coming from the opposite direction, the traffic in my lane would literally slow down and follow my 20 kilometer per hour (12 mph) until it was completely safe to pass.   In the states, they would have pushed you off the road (my son Bradly and I would attest to that too many times), but here it was as if you are a sacred object.  Now I can’t put an exact finger on it yet as to why, but when I figure it out, you will be the first to know. 

Sometimes I would draft behind a trike or sugar cane truck, that’s if they were going slow enough and I was not too exhausted.   Drafting is DANGEROUS and I don’t advise it, but it was always nice when you could be directly behind another vehicle and pulled along by its vacuum. Now, in case you were wondering if I was going thirty or forty miles per hour, that was never the case. I should also add that you pedaled your butt off to keep on their tail.  The most I ever cruised at was a mere twenty miles per hour.  Let’s face facts; they just don’t drive that fast in this country.

I must admit though that I did notice some similarities between the States and here in bicycling in that there was always a wind to contend with. Sometimes the breeze would be from the south, but mostly it blew from the north.   Now the clouds may travel east to west, but it appeared that those clouds never bothered to tell the surface winds of their direction.  Another fact of life was that flat tires existed no matter where you lived.  Even though I never had to change a tire on the present bike in the states, it only took a week for the rear tire to go flat here.  Nice little puncture in the side….go figure.

You know, even though it is only Wednesday, I learned a lot about many things this week. One was I should not ride buses, no matter what.  Secondly, owls definitely exist on the island of Negros. Thirdly I decided I needed to look over my shoulder more often when being approached from behind by buses.  And finally, the land and climate might change, but the winds and flat tires never will.