Perfect? Not Quite

So we moved into our apartment Saturday night. We did some bathroom shopping, bought a doormat, did the usual moving-in-type things. We even went out to dinner with our friends Luis and Virginia, whom we met at Posada Los Bucares, where we had been staying before finding our new place.

Save for the disgusting Red Sox rout (which thankfully they did something about last night ... c'mon, Pedro, give Schill a chance), the apartment seemed perfect. In Venezuela, though, nothing is ever quite perfect. Nothing is ever what it seems.

Brooke and I went to bed at midnightish. I was in the midst of some really deep sleep, dreaming of how to assassinate George Steinbrenner, when all of a sudden a woke with a start. I looked over and Brooke was wide awake, staring at me. "Did you hear that?" she said. No, I didn't, but it came again 10 seconds later.

COCKLE-DOODLE-DO!

Excuse me?

To review: For more than a week, we'd struggled to find an apartment that was merely adequate. Finally, we saw a place in a building across the street from our posada, and it was almost exactly what we wanted. We moved in. And now, at 4 a.m., in the middle of the city center, we were awakened by the sound of a

COCKLE-DOODLE-DO!

That's right. A rooster. Un gallo.

Sr. Gallo, however, didn't just do his thing at 4. No, he kept going ... all the way until 7 a.m. Even with earplugs, we could hear him, just like an alarm clock. Are you kidding? We live in an apartment building in the middle of a city with 300,000 fucking people and

COCKLE-DOODLE-DO!

Yesterday morning, we woke up and looked down at the ramshackle building behind the apartments. In the middle, in a mini-atrium, were two chickens, three children, and one large, strutting cock. (I only mention the children to point out the danger in trying to shoot the gallo from our room, or at least kill him with a slingshot.)

We talked to the building's administrator, who giggled and said no one had ever complained about it before. Oh, and that there was nothing he could really do about it. We went and had breakfast at the posada's café, and the sweet woman there told us, "Los gallos son así." Roosters are that way. No shit.

Anyway, we weighed our options. We checked our stock of earplugs, which is low, and thought about finding a new place. But you know what? If it isn't a rooster, it'll be roaches. If it isn't roaches, it'll be drunk kids at a downstairs bar. If it isn't drunks, it'll be a nightly cab ride from hell. Whatever the case, something will be wrong. So, we're sticking with Sr. Gallo. Who knows what will become of it. Last night we slept okay. We'll just go to bed and wake up earlier.

And besides, like I told Brooke, you just have to laugh. When you can't afford a gun, you just have to laugh.