Today I was either the subject of an elaborate scam, or the victim of an unfortunate incident, who was then kindly helped by strangers. I just can't decide.

The scene:
Pouring rain out, around midday, I'm walking down deserted blvds, heading for the Museum of Beaux Arts. Stop at a corner. Two people approach me. Man, Woman - ask me 'Hora?'

I respond by pointing at my watch, indicating both that its 12:15 and that I'm a tourist, albeit it not one with an expensive watch. I wait, they wait. Light starts to flash, I realize that I've misunderstood the traffic lights *again* am about to miss my walk signal. I rush to catch the last of the light as I cross the street and head into a (wide open) park. They follow.

At this point, the three of us are pretty much the only people walking through this park - I'm a bit suspecious because of the hora thing - two people, no watch? Seems unlikely - and the way they didn't cross the street until I did. But I'm not overly concerned. I'm not exactly in a tourist hotspot, and the weather was so bad, it would be hard to beleive they were targeting the area. It seems more likely that they are tourists as well. Plus they were pretty well put together for what was about to happen next.

Namely that I realize that somehow, someway, I've been mi mierda by a bird. And not just a little mierda. There is mierda on my jacket, on my backpack, on my *legs* and in my *hair*. I've beeen mierda carpet-bombed.

How could I have not noticed this when it happened? I don't know - but it was pouring rain out, so possible.

Enter my two possible thiefs/friends. Who exclaim and rush up to me, offering napkins and aqua. So I'm trying to mentally calculate the probabilty of these people having trained a bird to mierda on tourists, and weighing it against accepting their help to get this crap off of me as soon as possible. They are pulling on my jacket and my bag, which there is nothing in my jacket pockets, so I give them that to wipe down, while I hang onto my bag (camera). My wallet, which I wear across my chest, was under my jacket but is now in the open, and I'm trying to keep an eye on that and my bag as these two people find more and more mierda on me and my stuff. For about three minutes they help me clean up my jacket, bag, pants, hair, sometimes in front of me, sometimes behind me, until I finally am like 'gracias, gracias es bueno'. I say it a couple of times, and they eventually leave - walking back they way they came (odd) but handing me the rest of the napkins (nice).


I take a few minutes and make sure nothing is missing. Now - nothing is missing, but zippers were open. I can't swear they were all closed before, but its likely they were. A backpack zipper (one of six zippers- so tough odds for them) was open, and a zipper on my wallet was open (my wallet is a mess that I can barely find anything in, so again not easy to get stuff out of without taking the whole thing.

I honestly can not decide. Training a bird just seems so bizarre and resource intensive, unless *they* somehow sprayed me with it (and who knows what exactly it was), or boby trapped a tree in the park - but I don't know, none of those seems all that likely to be worth the effort.

Its the mystery of the day for me.

[had a great time at the art musuem - post for another time!]

ETA: Update! It is a scam! Google-able, no less.

At least now I feel better about NOT going back to the hostel for a shower before continuing on my way to the museum.