Our Mostly Outside Neighbours

I am not a fan of creepy, crawly, slithering or multi-legged creatures. Some of our outside ‘friends’ are absolutely beautiful, some weird and others downright scary. And of course, some are really good dive bombers. We have them all, I guess learning how to co-exist is the trick. I am also trying to learn how not to freak out when something big and ugly lands on my bare skin.

Egrets comes in the absolutely beautiful category.

This Egret is a frequent visitor in our backyard. It will not let me get close. We play a game of hide and seek, with me behind a bush. When I take a step towards him, he will fly or walk short distances away, never letting me get one step closer.

Then Daryl takes the picture!

Apparently this is a boa constrictor, just a baby. We first noticed it above the BBQ as we were making dinner. Daryl was taking its picture….and what did it do but poop. Thankfully not on his head! It has been around a couple of times since but seems to not like the smoky bbq.

We have had a scorpion in the house three times….who’s counting?. One evening we came in from outside and this little bugger was in the kitchen. He posed quite nicely for Daryl to take his picture (for some strange reason the camera get shaky when I try to get close). And then he bit the dust!! A few mornings later when I came out of the bedroom, there was another scorpion in the exact same spot. I hit it soo hard with the fly swatter!!

Any more and we will be due a fumigation.

Not all of our multi legged friend are scary. This industrious little ant can carry a big load. We have several of their “houses” in the yard to prove it.

Our bedroom is at the back of the house. At night it is pitch black outside except for nights we have a moon and stars. One night, just before bedtime, I opened the door and switched on the light. On the wall above our bed there was a gigantic cockroach…una cucaracha….at least 2 inches long….or maybe 6 inches… I quietly backed out, closed the door and said “Daryl, we have a cockroach”. The implicit understanding is I am not going to bed until that thing is gone. That is the only cockroach we have seen in the house. Needless to say, Daryl took care of “that thing”. The golden coloured ‘bug’ below is another cockroach that we see outside fairly often. Unless it is on me, I am kind of okay with it.

A fancy coloured cockroach

Most days we got for a long beach walk, always bare foot as water lapping on your toes feels so good. I didn’t even see this snake until Daryl pointed it out. We think it was dead as we gently moved it with a long stick and it didn’t move. We have used the Lens app a lot…. apparently this is a venomous yellow bellied sea snake. Needless to say I am looking where I am stepping a lot more closely now.

This cute little alien seems to belong to the praying mantis family.

Turkey Vulture

This young man, riding bareback in the waves, was giving the horse quite a workout. Definitely not in the bug category, but sure made for an interesting walk.

We see literally dozens of different bugs, birds, spiders and more every day. I swear, gecko’s make a game of sneaking into the house every chance they get. Mostly they are quite amicable to being shoo’d out the door with a broom. It’s keeping life interesting.

Chau

Ruth

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