Noise

I can hardly believe that I’m actually sitting on the veranda of our little guest house in Bullet Tree, Belize. It rained about two hours ago, but now, as the sun is setting, the sky is clearing.
I could hear the howler monkeys off to the south, faintly, but it’s hard to mistake their low bark and growl.
A couple of days ago we were enjoying a chat with Rene, when I would have sworn I heard a chicken on our roof. It was clucking away, overhead. I looked startled and Rene just laughed. It’s a frog – probably living in or near the gutter. Now, tonight, there are two of them on separate corners, clucking like mad.
All of a sudden, all sound was drowned out by the parrots coming by, hundreds of them, parking for a bit in the trees on all sides of the house. I watch them fly and settle in the trees, but then they seem to disappear, their green bodies blending with the trees. Only their screeching and scrawling gives them away. What a racket. They chirp and chortle, with the sound almost deafening. I’m sitting here laughing at the strangeness and glory of the whole spectacle.
As they move on, we hear shouting and gunfire, or fire crackers. I tho’t it was folks behind the hill getting drunk, but Rene told us it’s the farmers trying to keep the parrots from eating their corn.
All the noises are strange to us, but we’re learning the sounds of our new home.