Things that go bump in the night...

Sometimes, when I am sitting around doing a whole lot of nothing (erm...i mean, working hard and saving the world) I come up with brilliant things to write here in the blog. However, once all of the magic ingredients have coalesced to make internet time possible, I am inevitably sitting somewhere cool, pleasant, possibly beachside, and with electricity. Add that to the fact that my bi-weekly beer is probably in one hand, causing me to slowly tap out one letter at a time due to my extreme reluctance to let go of it for even a second, and you have the perfect recipe for stream-of consciousness blog posts. My immersion in paradise generates a complete and utter indifference towards what seemed important one or two days ago : ) So, I uploaded pictures and will take this opportunity to tell you about my room mates. Just take it in confidence that I have lots of exciting projects and plans at site going full speed ahead.

So, as far as I can tell, my bug nerdiness began during summers in North Carolina which were defined by days spent staring at caddisfly larvae in mountain streams, catching june bugs by the dozen, and killing jarfulls of fireflies under the pretense of "making lanterns." As I mentioned earlier, though, my bug love is being put to the test here. However! Look who came flying into my hut the other night, causing me to bolt into the backyard yelping in fright. Eventually, I tiptoed my way back in to investigate. I poked and prodded the creature to asses the potential dangers, at which point I discovered...its a praying mantis!!! So, I picked it up and took photos:




Mantids eat obnoxious bugs like flies, mosquitoes, and beetles, so they are fine by me. Plus, they are fascinating creatures. I caught one a couple of weeks ago and named her Jaws, but she isn't an adult yet, so no idea what species she is. Here's a photo:




Now. I also have about 5 or 6 geckos living in the hut. In case you are picturing the cute little terrarium inhabiting creatures...that's not the case. Look at this monster:




He thinks he's hiding in this picture (?). Like mantids, Geckos also eat the obnoxious bugs, and are thus welcome in my humble abode. This fellow has also recently moved into my hut:





He, also, seems to think he is hiding in this picture (nobody ever said being cute=having brains). My attitude towards him was benevolent, up until about two days ago. Besides his affinity for eating my erasers, I didn't see the problem with having a mouse. That is, until I lay awake the other night pondering what I could do to get rid of the beetles who have recently taken to boring holes in the wooden beams holding up my roof (more geckos? more mantids? Insecticide?). I considered the finely balanced food web in this here hut. The beetles eat my hut, the Geckos eat the beetles. The mosquitoes eat me, the geckos eat the mosquitoes. I would like to get a cat for a pet, but then it would eat the geckos, and I need those for population control. But what about the mouse? Where does it fit in....really? Well! let me tell you...after some investigation I realized that the mouse is ALSO eating my hut!!! The thatch roofing. Apparently the all-eraser diet needs supplementing. My hut is under attack on two fronts, and I decided not to sit back and watch it crumble to the ground. I came up with a "roommate management plan." Here it is:




My very own mouse trap, baited with an eraser. The idea is simple, the evil hut-eating noise-making mouse walks up the ramp, steps onto the can to get the eraser, the can flips under the weight, and the mouse is dumped into a bucket of unfiltered well water. mwahaha. And then I can, inchallah, get a good night's sleep for once, while the hut eating shenanigans are put to a watery end. We'll see what happens. I would prefer a less violent method, but the thought of not only catching a live mouse, but then walking through the village with it and trying to explain what I'm doing just seems like too much of an ordeal.

In other, less morbid news, here are some family photos. There are two year old twins in my family who are super cute. They like to have me throw shirts over their heads so they can dance around like that. Again...being cute does not equal big brains. Also witnessed by my four year old brother who was, yesterday, dancing around with a plastic bag on his head and shoes on the wrong feet. I didn't take a picture of that. It seemed a bit...cruel. Im glad to report that he is perfectly fine, though.





OK! Have a good day.