Critters 2

 I've been adding photos to this post for several months as I collect them.  Time to publish!  This "critter" trumps all of the rest.  He looked pretty scary when we found him in our back bathroom.  We have found 2 others in our house at other times.  He was painstakingly captured in our new "bug box," photographed and then put to death in our freezer.  Come to find out, he's harmless and you can buy one for $30 on the internet.  He's a pretty interesting critter actually, known as a whip scorpion or Vinegaroon.   As we captured him, we noticed an odd smell, but couldn't identify it.  Turns out these arachnids produce acetic acid (pure undiluted vinegar) and emit the substance when threatened!  Now that we know they are harmless, we might keep the next one we find as a pet ...at least for a little while. 

I usually can't get a successful photo of a butterfly, but here is an exception. 

Fuzzy caterpillars that show up on our front porch from time to time.  Don't touch them because their hairs will come off and be very itchy.

Now the cicak ....our friends who chirp, who poop on our walls, and who actually do eat the mosquitoes in our house.  To describe them, I give you this quote from one of our favorite books about our host country

"Cicak are house lizards that occupy a space in every self-respecting ....home.  Bashful creatures they most certainly are, preferring to stick about on walls, behind pictures and in corners.  Cicak are everywhere -- they don't care where they stick.  While there might appear to be less cicak in a well-off, tightly air-conditioned home than in say, a Padang restaurant, al lyou need to do is look behind a picture frame and there they all are, hoping for a bite to eat.  Cicak are wonderful because they eat mosquitoes.

...They are not big, seldom more than four inches, nose to tail.  They move in zigzag directions and make clicking sounds to each other.  If you startle a cicak, they are prone, as a shock tactic, to release their tail, which then wriggles about disturbingly on its own for a while.  One of the few drawbacks with these domestic lizards, apart from little birdlike droppings everywhere, is when they die behind a wardrobe without telling you and start making decomposing smells.  Not nice." 

 

Jonathan actually was inspired to learn counting when he became aware of the cicaks on our walls. 

 

This one lost his tail once....see where it is growing back skinny?

Sigh ...sometimes cicak loose their toe suction and fall.  Usually they just run away, but for some reason they can't get their grip on the sink walls.  Finding a cicak in my sink is not my favorite way to start the day.  They are not that easy to get out ...but Jonathan is usually entertained. 

Giant grasshopper on our gate ....this is what inspired me to finally buy a bug box so we can catch and keep a guy like this for a half day and study him. 

This is a little snake that showed up on our back door handle several weeks ago.  Inside the house.  No idea how he got there.  Dave was just checking the door to make sure it was locked and ....surprise!