Critters

Help my house is being invaded by giant caterpillars driving a John Deere tractor!  I walked into the living room the other day and THIS is what I found! 

Well, we do live in the tropics and bugs and critters are abundant ...although here in our small city they are mostly on the smaller side and quite common .....lots of ants and mosquito.   Occasionally we hear of friends who have some real excitement.  For instance last year a 6 foot python was found on the school track (and was was adopted and later released back into the wild by some friends.)  Even more scary, last week a friend reported of a "white tipped viper" invading her daughters' bedroom.  It had been disturbed out of it's rock pile home by some new construction. (That one was NOT adopted, as it was quite poisonous.)  I don't hear snake stories very often though.   Today I'd like to share some photos of some of the critters I have managed to catch on camera. 

 

 He looks awful and he is indeed huge...about half as long as my pinky finger and as big around too.   He is indeed a kind of bee and what you see here is just his skin, actually.  I'm not sure if his insides have been eaten or if he just moved out because he grew.  His exoskeleton has been attached there to our tree for a good month now.....weathering quite a few hard rain storms.  These guys buzz loudly around our passionfruit vines quite a bit.

This guy is a chameleon of sorts ...when I first saw him he was brown, and then he turned green when he scurried off the fence into the hibiscus bush.  Jonathan and I played hide-and-seek with him for about half and hour before he found a better hiding place.

 

We do have butterflies come through every day, but they don't land and I can't photo them.  The moths tend to land more and rest a while.  Jonathan was excited to find this guy on our porch yesterday.

 Here's another guy who stopped on our porch last month when my mom was visiting.

Now to tell you about some of the critters who come INSIDE our house.  The lines of ants who patrol the kitchen each evening are just something we live with....but I had to put my foot down when a colony decided to try building a sandy anthill in our bedroom!  Here Jonathan and I are sweeping up a good 1/2 cup of sand that were brought up through holes in the tile/wall junction.  The holes have now been cemented over and no more ants in the bedroom.  Unfortunately they have moved into back bathroom....

What you see here are "termite tunnels."  A few months ago we bought a lovely new desk.  We live in an older house, but I've never seen termites in any of the rooms.  Then last week, I discovered they had bored through the floor and had made "tunnels" all around the bottom of the new desk!  I was so sad I felt nauseated...God's lesson to me not to be too attached to possessions. In the picture, the tunnels you see were built overnight after we had cleaned away the previous ones.   Now those holes have been cemented over too and the desk is still out being repaired.

What is a "termite tunnel" you ask?  The termites have fragile bodies, so they bring dirt and mud (and bug feces) and build mounded tunnels so they can move to and from and around their food sources more safely.  YUCK! 

So that completes this episode of critters around our home!  For the next episode, tune in again to see cecaks, tokeks, massive ant nests hiding inside a blender, cockroaches, and much, much more!