There is music in the air on Vieques. I’m high on a hill top and the wind, rarely still, rarely the same speed, moves through luxuriant vegetation. The gusts clatter steel gates, flap wall plaques, and frenzy wind chimes. Rain comes like solid wind. Everything is drenched. Five minutes later everything is dry.
Here a rooster, there a rooster, everywhere a rooster — in the yard, in the road, in the restaurant. Roosters communicate.
With dusk come the tree frogs, the coqui. I suspect there are a thousand of them surrounding ‘mi casita.’ They sing a beautiful song of praise for the day that’s been with messages of love and comfort for the night. They go to sleep, most of them, before I do, but there are still crickets and other unknown music makers through the night, and, of course, the roosters.
The roosters—at 4 am, they all get together to announce that the sun is going to come up in only two hours and why on earth would anyone still be in bed when it is going to be such a glorious day?
Parrots had been extinct on the island but have resurrected themselves and fly by in noisy flocks. Horses clip clop past singly or in small groups and whinny at the water bucket we keep at road’s edge.
Oh, and did I mention the roosters?