All creatures great and small....

Well, it´s a jungle out here!! Not only figuratively... but literally of course.

We have made mention of the many adjustments to life we have had to face in our time here. Among the biggest, is the day to day interaction with the wild life....snakes, rats, monkeys, spiders, scorpions, rats, bats and brats. (All but the latter can be found living in our backyard :o) )

A quick story of our slow adjustment to our new surroundings. For those of you arachnophobes, you may prefer to skip this part.

One night after putting our kids to bed, Doug and I returned home to make a quick meal and our 8:30pm bedtime deadline (4:30am comes very quickly). With my candle in hand, I went to use the bathroom only to find that it was already being used....by a very large, and I mean VERY LARGE, yellow and black spider. Well, as I am not one to enjoy an audience on my bathroom breaks, I of course did the brave thing and called my husband to ¨take care of it¨. We soon realized however that this was a two man job, and while I held the flashlight steady on our GIGANTIC friend, Doug took a broom and tried to swap it into the next world. Well, we had obviously underestimated our large friend, and it quickly escaped and ran to the floor.

The next few minutes were rather scary...and more than a little embarrassing in hindsight.

Needless to say ALOT of noise was made yelling directions at each other (in high-pitched voices) as our 8 legged friend remained one step ahead of us. In our frustration and concentration however, we became oblivious to the audience that was slowly gathering in our entrance way. Hearing the cries from the ¨new white couple¨, the locals could only assume that a mass murderer or wild animal was on the attack and so quickly came to our rescue. We turned around to find 5 locals, (machetes in hand), in our main room, ready to take on the culprit. Needless to say the explanation (in our broken Spanish) of a spider in the loo, will no doubt be told around the orphanage and nearby villages for years to come.

We now battle all our wildlife friends BIG and small....in silence!


Some of the local Howler Monkeys that have the pleasure of waking us up at 4 every morning.


On the farm, the many pigs that well.....soon become lunch.


A friendly frog that decided to join us for dinner one night.


Hard to see, but a few of the thousands of Leaf Cutter ants that patrol past our door each day.


A little rat I had to escort from the premises one day.


Our local bull who is free to roam past our door at leasure (we don´t wear red).


One of 3 scorpions we have had the pleasure of ¨putting down¨recently.