I'll take corny jokes for $500 please Alex...

Why did the chicken cross the road?

While the main road through town is quite well traveled, at the blazing speed of 25mph, and at certain times of the day actually has traffic jams, some of the travelers along the road aren't what you might expect or what I may have seen in other places I have lived. Animals, animals wandering everywhere.

Today I traveled a half of a mile and counted 11 dogs along the way. There were two packs of 4, and then 3 "lone wolves" so to speak. The dog situation here is seriously out of hand. Many have mange, fleas, are starving, or in other ways sick. All the females are either pregnant or just were, and while I understand many Samoan families love puppies, once the dog becomes a problem, as they ALWAYS do, many dogs are just left to fend for themselves, or if one becomes a nuisance, they throw rocks at it until it finally runs off. Yet as I now realize, since I have now been here for all of three weeks, the wild and stray dogs aren't all mean and scary. Many are entertaining to watch in action.

They are actually quite wily, dodging cars, and scrapping around for food. I saw this one with the ACME product catalog, out in front of the McDonald's parking lot. I think he may be plotting a way to get happy meals by taking out the next large family filled van in the drive-thru.

The chickens have basically suffered the same fate. Many years ago I am told, there were chickens here, domesticated, egg laying, producing chickens. Now there are just wild chickens running around peoples yards as well as up and down the street. The good news is that they keep the snail population down which would likely otherwise take over the island.

There are also a few cows on the island. I hear at one time the church had a dairy here, but since most Samoans do not drink milk or really like cheese or other milk products, as they have never been exposed to much due to the exorbitant costs, the dairy was not a money maker, and closed. Thankfully they are not wandering the roads.

So funny to see the animals just walking down the street, and even more entertaining because no one stops for chickens in the road, or dogs for that matter. Needless to say, the dogs are fast, as are the few living cats, and the slow thinking chicken who hesitates, unsure why he is crossing the proverbial road, is surely lost!