Day Three

A strange thing happened on day three. All of the chaos and nastiness stopped being funny. I was no longer entertained by the zillions of flies in the kitchen; the donkey was pissing me off; even the trip with Yiannis to the port (with a stop at a dumpster) failed to break my weariness. 

To understand the full extent, here is an overview of a few tasks I've been preforming:

Skinning chickens-I didn't mind this yesterday. It made me swear off meat again, but I could handle it. However, I skinned chickens today for about three hours. Whole chickens. The best way to skin a chicken is to tear  at the breast, then rip (as fat oozes) at the legs and move on to the hardest part-the back. If the tailbone skin doesn't rip off completely you have to take a knife and saw it off. Some chickens are tainted yellow; those have the worst smell. Flies hover and the dogs periodically swat out skin from the bucket and gnaw on it beside your feet.

Feeding animals in monkey room-Perhaps the worst smell here---or tied with the yellow chicken. The monkey room has two monkeys, a pelican, several cranes and a dozen seagulls.  I've given up trying to breathe in the monkey room. The floor is caked with cardboard, layered with shit. We have to strain out buckets of dead fish and put new fish or chicken in. My favorite part is when the dead fish water splashes up onto your face. Love that.

Preparing food for birds-Even this seemingly easy task is revolting. The food is prepared in the clinic; a stuffy area filled with a combination of animals in cages, boxes and, yes, one hawk that roams free and defecates wherever he chooses.  The food is that of which Yiannis pulls from the dumpster. Kiwi. Chicken. Meat. Grapes. The tomatoes are (almost) always rotten and add to the aroma. Slice them and brown squirts on your fingers.  Some of the rotten meat has a sweet smell. 

Changing the pigeon boxes/feeding pigeons-Pigeons are sent from all over Greece (by mail) to Ekpaz. There are approximately 100 pigeons. The majority have no ailments and need to be released but Yiannis is an animal hoarder. They excrete disgusting amounts, hum loudly and try to peck the hand that feeds them. .The first day I was patiently coaxing them around as I cleaned, "Ahhh c'mere buddy it's OK. Just move to the side." Now: "C'mon you little fucker. I don't have all day. You gonna play nice? Or are you gonna be a bastard?" 


Yeah. I'm cracking. There's no way I can do this for two weeks.