Their beaks don’t curl up into a proboscis when they’re done feeding. However, given the speed that this sucker was moving, and the woman yelling at them in a language they didn’t know, at a quick glance, it would have been easy to confuse it for a hummingbird.īut I’ve seen hummingbirds before in my aunt’s garden in Southern California. Now, for the record, my husband, Joanna, and Kenny are pretty damn sharp.
“She saying that this bug,” I said, pointing to the insect that zipped around the plant, the one my husband and his colleagues had gravitated around, “will bite us.” My Spanish isn’t great, but I understood the one word she kept repeating again and again – “pica.” When I had visited Spain during a school trip in high school, my host father had used that word to describe spicy food. The woman continued to frantically speak to us. “Um, no,” I said, leaning in to get a better look. “Honey, look!” Rand said, pointing to the unidentified flying object as it flitted from flower to flower. When I returned, I found them excitedly snapping pictures of a creature that was hovering around a lavender bush, while an older woman was speaking to them brusquely in Castellano. Though none of them spoke Spanish, I figured they’d be fine for a few minutes without me.įamous last words, if ever there were any. Having imbibed one-too-many aguas sin gas, I left the three of them outside the market, in front of a plant nursery, while I popped into a bathroom. (Here is a photo of them, posing for there as-yet-unnamed, un-recorded, and un-released first album.) A few weeks ago, I found myself there with Rand and his coworkers Joanna and Kenny. This week’s WTF Wednesday takes us to an open-air market in Barcelona.