A Street-Side Addition

After writing the last post about "Street Culture," I have found a new category to add to the list of street inhabitants: Street Animals.

While walking through the Centro on a Saturday, I noticed that the newfangled item for sale are dyed chicks (as in baby chickens, not human females). Fuchsia, turquoise, and orange are the most popular colors. Kids love them, young ladies think they are just adorable, and if Colombians celebrated a commercialized Easter they would be found sitting plumply among chocolate eggs wrapped in pastel foil and bunny stuffed animals in children's Easter baskets. I was walking with my friend Marcela, from LA but with paisa parents: culturally American but Colombian by blood, and she stopped and gaped at the peeping, fuzzy mass on the sidewalk. Her reaction was not out of marvel for their cuteness, but rather out of shock at the awful mistreatment of such helpless animals. She started to rudely ask the vendor about what kind of dye he uses, how long it lasts, and if it is harmful to the chicklets, only stopping once he appeared to feel sufficiently guilty about his wares. The next man we saw selling chicks out of a box hung around his neck didn't even look at us after he heard the suprised *gasp* at there being more colored chicks less than a block away. I went up to him and asked if I could take a picture, saying that I was from a local newspaper and writing an article on cruel animal treatment in the street. The woman standing there buying a purple chick just smiled at me sadly, continuing with her purchase. An interesting contrast was that a man several feet away was selling fake, real-colored chicks, with what seemed little luck since his box was still completely full. What can I say, color sells.
The next animal surprise was a man selling matching visor and jacket combos for dogs. He had even brought with him a puppy stuffed animal being sniffed by a live terrier. An interested customer could take their pick from the Nacional green and white (local soccer team), fatigue, an array of pinks, and the rival red of the Medellin soccer team. They only cost $10.000 pesos.

But by far my favorite of the day was a man selling different colored bra straps, some even with rhinestones, in one hand, and a tiny quarter-sized turtle crawling around the other hand. He was rather good-natured about my attempts to take the perfect picture despite my focusing issues, and seemed like he just wanted to get rid of the poor fellow. I actually considered taking this one home, until I remembered how the girls who used to live down the hall in my freshman dorm kept two turtles for a semester and being able to smell them through the walls. I doubt my current roommate would appreciate having a stinky turtle in our apartment, no matter how small.