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! 

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!