Creatures

Last blog post I promised a few photos and stories of the creatures around our house. The ants are far too small, most of them at least, to take photos of, but we do have some good stories. One of them is from when Rebecca was here. She went into her room to change her t-shirt and begin itching within minutes. After thinking that she might be going a bit crazy, she decided to check it out. When she removed her shirt there were ants crawling all across her. Ew!!! Lets just say that I knew something was up from the sounds of disgust coming out of her room. In the months around her visit we've been driven crazy by the little ants, ones that are much smaller than Canada's sugar ants. I thought maybe it was something in our house, but as I visit other homes, no matter how classy the home, I can still see ants on the floor at least. We've resorted to spreading baby powder at the base of our beds, and this has seemed to keep them at bay. No longer do I get woken up abruptly from a nap by some sharp bite on my arm or leg. I still have to shake out my toothbrush before I use it, and that may never end.

Since I last wrote the post promising stories, I've seen numerous lizards in our yard. Last week I saw one on our front door screen and was able to get a photo, and even better, yesterday I was cooling down after a long walk and saw a chameleon climbing a bush in our backyard. The red-spotted one in the photo was also on our front porch, and it's called a Tokay. It actually makes a sound like that. It's a very interesting lizard, and it loves to eat the big, fat juicy ants and flying termites that hang around our yard. In the last 36 hours I've seen 4 lizards (3 outside of our yard) and that's amazing. Usually I see one every few months. It must be lizard season!

We've also had a weird stint of bats around our place. It was neat that Rebecca was here to witness them with me. One Saturday

night we had stayed home from church, and we had a swarm of what we call flying termites (not sure if that's correct) buzzing our front porch

light. All of a sudden there were what seemed like dozens of bats swooping at the bugs, and this lasted for at least 30 minutes. Rebecca took a video and I got some photos. See the cat

watching the bats? We have no idea where it came from but it was just as intrigued as us. For the record, we took the photos from inside the house...there was NO way you'd get us outside with those evil looking things flying around our heads.

The photo of the frog was taken by Rebecca, in the middle of the night in our home. She saw it moving in the dark and instead of turning on a light, she figured out what it was by taking a flash photo of it. Clever! Lately there have been hordes of frogs frollicking in our front yard. They're everywhere...not quite a plague but they do make themselves known. I was even transplanting an orchid and there was a frog in the pot, under the orchid roots. Do they hibernate near the equator???

Today when I was gardening I found a dead snake in our little nook at the side of our house. Really, there's no better snake than a dead snake, at least when it comes to me entering dark spaces!!!

Thanks for reading.