Creature comfort?

The tropics are home to a number of animals and creatures, many of which do not live in Barbados.  I know this because whenever I say something like, "Oh man, did you see that toad?!!" or "Why do the lizards keep coming into the house?!!?"  Someone, read my husband, always reminds me that at least we don't have centipedes or millipedes or snakes that can strangle us in six minutes flat or bloodsucking bats or bugs that get into your clothes and eat your flesh.  Got it.  It's true.  Those things I definitely could not abide.  But I am not in love with any of these other creatures either and none more so than the mosquito or the toad or the snail or the mothra moths!

When the girls and I first got here, there were no screens on any of the doors and windows and all kinds of creatures made their way into the house for cozy, cool resting places.  How Didier could have lived here all those months without thinking of screens is beyond me.  We had a newborn baby and the swamp had brought all its things to our home!  I arrived with a "hell no" in the eyes and a little bit of crazy.  I still believe I can feel a mosquito lurking at 10 paces and the poor lizards cling to the wall when they see me because they know I will spend the night trying to get them off the wall and out of the house before anyone gets to close his eyes, read Didier. 

The mosquitoes waste their time these days in their attempts to torture me as I believe they have met their match in Stephanie Penn-Virot.  Not only do I have three electric mosquito zappers strategically placed around the house, but I now boast three tennis racket "bug zappers" that function much like Roger Federer at practice.  A mosquito comes into view and "Whoosh!"  I swing the racket and zap that sucker to kingdom come.  It is not a one-sided game either.  Somehow, every morning, I awaken with two or three new bites.

I think the African snails face the greatest wrath of my crazy.  Stowaways to the island in the late 80s, early 90s, the African snail eats everything that gets in its way, destroying vegetation, flower gardens, banana plants, leaving slime all over the patio and walkways.  I had no idea what to do with these snails and as I am married to a Frenchman, thought to ask him for a solution.  Of course he had already inquired.  These snails could be eaten, but they needed first, to be starved for 2 weeks to get rid of all the crud, technical term, they had taken in eating everything in their pathways.  Seemed the better solution was to pour salt water over them and watch them melt into oblivion like the Wicked Witch in Oz.  They destroy crops before you come for me.  I am doing a service.

Before the screens were put in, and I know by now you must have realized they would be, a giant moth the size of my hand flew into the house and started to land in my hair!  Because I am hypervigilant in the dark, I saw him coming from the darkness and started a silent shriek. (Well, the girls were asleep and I still did not want to wake them.)  Didier, the nerve, started laughing until he saw the size of the thing!  Of course I have no pictures of this one, but trust me, some of its relatives still linger on the patio walls.  Scary.

Finally, and this is definitely last but not least, is the giant toad.  Yes, I am aware that they eat the mosquitoes, like the lizards, but really, they are not doing their job the way I am getting eaten up.  They might be some of the ugliest things you have ever seen and worse than all that is the defecating done all about the premises when the sun goes down.  Black, slimy, sludgy nastiness, smelling like the sea and cut wet grass there is literally nothing to make me love that shit or those toads.

The girls, even Virginie, laugh their heads off when they see me freak over these creatures.  Ha ha.  At least I amuse them and at the end of the day I get to see them smile...and that is pretty much every day.

(c)copyright 2010. Citymominthejungle