crabby

bathroom crab

Remember when I said we had a resident crab in our bathroom? Well, he either grew a lot or he got eaten by this monster.

I used to not mind the crab so much. He only came out at night and seemed fairly harmless, but this guy is a little too big to be a bathroom crab/pet. So Clif took him outside one night. Apparently, he wasn't fit for the wild. I'm pretty sure I found him dead the next morning.

*I don't know why Blogger keeps insisting on putting this picture this direction. I even saved a version half a turn the other way just in case it was having a weird "turning the photos" glitch, but that one posted the same direction as this one. He's a crab.. they walk sideways, his picture is sideways too... idk. I loaded it 3 times 3 different ways and it all came out like this. So I'm done trying to fix it.

creatures

Way too many creatures live in our house. They have not been invited - in fact, many have been very specifically uninvited via poison, traps, and bait - but they insist on staying.

Last night it seemed that they all decided to come out. I came home to find skink poop on my pillow. Yuck. Then Clif and I watched a movie, immediately after the movie he noticed a 3 inch long cockroach on the curtains. Yuck again. After much swatting (Clif) and squealing (me), it was flushed.

As I was in the bathroom getting ready for bed, which can sometimes take a long time for no particular reason and last night was one of those times, I noticed a trail of ants along the bathroom wall. I figured I'd follow the trail and replace whatever it was they were eating with ant bait. So I went to get the ant bait and as I reached into the box I heard scurrying. I put my hand into the box and simultaneously felt spiderwebs in the box (ew) and saw a rat running into the laundry room (ew, ew, ew). I hate the feeling of spiderwebs and, well, I don't particularly love rats either.

As soon as I stopped freaking out about that (which didn't take too much time since I already knew we had a rat-guest. I've seen him around lately and have been unsuccessful in my attempts to (a) murder or (b) displace him), but then I heard scurrying on the stove too. A mouse was trying to squeeze down under the heating coils. Yuck again!

I went to sleep (not easily or well, but the blame for that may be on the goriness of Sweeney Todd), content in the knowledge that we had never seen anything other than skinks -well, and that one poisonous centipede- in the bedrooms. Only to awake this morning to Simon's, "mom... there's a rat in the kitchen."

I had just about given up (traps never work. Poison works, but are dead, maggoty rodents any better than live ones?), but not anymore. I have had enough. I'm going to buy every rodent-ridding product this island has to offer (ummm, except poison. I've had enough maggots in my hair to last a lifetime, by which I mean, I've had one in my hair and that's more than enough.).

Hmmm, I can't imagine I'm attracting visitors with this post...

Saturday was a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Because I found a maggot in my hair. (Don't worry, no pictures of nasty stuff. Only vague descriptions so no one gets too grossed out.)

I know that the house we live in isn't exactly a fortress and that screen walls can only keep out so much of the riff-raff, but we saw a mouse a week or so ago and I was not ok with that. We bought some poison and put it out and saw a rat (thinking it was the mouse) and believed that it had somehow escaped death. Turns out, it hadn't.

Friday, our house started to stink. We looked around and couldn't find the problem. Then on Saturday we remembered that we were attempting to be mouse-murderers and looked in our little attic area. We saw a dead rat. It was huge and had obviously been dead for several days. Clif took it out (I'm sure I wouldn't have dealt with it as well as he did) and we waited for the smell to clear up. It got a little better, but it was still pretty stinky.

About 1/2 hour before Everett's birthday party (oh yeah, did I mention we were trying to get ready for a party?), Clif realized that the mouse was dead too in the attic area, under a piece of wood that was under a door. We only knew because the hole in the ceiling for the laundry room light fixture is too big and the mouse was right on top of the hole and some "stuff" from the mouse fell through. Nasty "stuff" that you don't want details about.

So, he cleaned up the mouse too. This time, I helped hold the chair in place that he had put on top of the counter in order to climb up into the "attic" (it's more like a loft above the kitchen/laundry/bathroom). We thought we had the mouse/rat problem taken care of.

Soon after, it was party time. We did all the standard birthday games, pinata, cake, presents... you know. Nothing momentous, but fun. The kids all seemed to have a great time and got really competitive trying to win the gold medals we made out of cookies and ribbons.

We chatted with the kids parents when they picked their kids up, cleaned up, tried to relax a bit and, when I was washing my hands, glanced in the mirror to see a maggot in my hair. I freaked out! I nearly shaved my head and started yelling and, mainly, went nuts trying to figure out HOW it happened.

I have two theories. One, that when I was holding the chair for Clif a maggot fell on my head out of the bundle that contained what was left of the mouse and other nasty stuff. This theory has the unpleasantness of thinking that the maggot had been on my head for many hours (about 4 or 5) including an entire birthday party, several chats with parents, the entire clean-up process, and even a short conversation with some new friends who live in Lion's Park. I don't like that thought. That is much too long for a maggot to have been on my head (it's sad when I have degrees of acceptable amounts of time for a maggot to have been on my head).

Two, that we have yet another rodent that had some tasty poison and is dropping nastiness through another hole in the ceiling. I hadn't been in the laundry room so that isn't a possibility, but there could be another one lurking somewhere in the great unknown that is our attic-ish area. This theory has the unpleasant aspect of thinking that we have another dead rodent in the house, but also is pretty unlikely since the smell is gone and it was mainly created out of my need to believe that the maggot was not in my hair for several hours.

The creatures in this house had been getting to me Saturday anyway. I saw a skink on the "clean" dishes in the dish drying rack earlier and I actually chased it out of the house screaming at it because I was so tired of cleaning only to have all the bugs and lizards crawl all over things. So it was not a good day for finding a maggot in my hair. As if there is a good day for finding a maggot in your hair.

Sunday was great though. We went to the beach and got some snorkeling in, the kids had a blast playing with all the new toys at our house (thanks to some very generous party-goers), and, most importantly, I didn't find a maggot in my hair.

But from now on, we're using traps.

Mountain Dew is Delicious

Even geckos think so. And then they run away really fast.

Lizards in the Yard

Yesterday I decided to go outside and take some pictures of the birds. There are a couple of common birds that hang around in our yard that I want pictures of. As I walked out the backdoor a couple of lizards went scurrying away and I changed my mind and instead started taking pictures of the lizards. I was able to get pictures of two different types of skink and also of the poisonous toad that is common on the island.

This first skink is by far my favorite. In the shade it has a dark brown upper body with copper colored stripes and a blue tail. They are smaller than the other skinks that I have seen. The largest that I saw was about 3 inches long. When they are in the sun their color changes to a bright gold on their body and their tail becomes a shinny metallic blue. As you can see it is a very colorful lizard.

(Blue-tailed copper-striped skink; Tafuna; American Samoa)

I followed the poisonous toad around for a while until it hopped into a little hole in a stump. It felt safe there and I was able to get few great pictures (although I had to use the manual focus and take several shots since the frog was basically the same color as the stump). I also was able to get a picture of what I think is a Pacific Black Skink. I'm not exactly sure because of the stripes and color variation on its body. The drawing I have in my animal identification book has it as a solid black. I am assuming that it is a Pacific Black since the Samoan Skink is found only in forest habitats.

(Marine Toad; Tafuna; American Samoa)


(Pacific Black Skink; Tafuna; American Samoa)

This morning I caught this cute little Gecko. Actually they are hard to catch so the trick really is to put your hand in front of them when the are running and eventually they will get frustrated and just jump on your hand and then climb all over you. After I caught him he sat on my arm for about five minutes and we visibly noticed his color change. He then climbed up on my hair and sat on my head for about ten minutes (while I got the kids breakfast) and he changed to a dark brown color. These pictures clearly show his color change (and yes this is the same lizard). We were impressed. There is nothing more spectacular than an animal that can change its color to fit into its environment.


(Stump-toed Gecko; Tafuna; American Samoa)

so much to blog about...

We loved seeing all of you who came to visit before we left! I wish I had been a bit more on top of the picture taking though - we hardly have pictures of any of you! We finally finished up all the moving/packing/cleaning details the evening before our flight left, although at times it seemed that we'd never get it all done.

The trip here was fairly uneventful, although there were some differences. The flight from Hawaii to Pago was the only flight I've ever been on where the flight attendants walk down the aisle with seat belt extenders before take-off (the kids kept confusing rocket & airplane terminology and asking when we were going to "blast off" - the flight attendants and I were amused by that). We also noticed that people were much more polite on that flight than the other two we'd been on earlier.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that the kids were so exhausted after 24 hours of traveling that they fell asleep on top of the luggage as we were waiting at baggage claim in Pago Pago.

Although they did get to play some computer games in between flights.

We met a very nice, informative Samoan woman during our layover in Hawaii. Since then she's stopped by our house a couple times - she found the place when she spotted the boys outside (it's a small island!) and just tonight she brought by some fresh bananas. It's been a nice reminder of how interconnected we all are on this island.

Our first couple days here were pretty slow. The High Court put us up in the Tradewinds Hotel where the kids enjoyed racing each other in the pool and we had some time to get over our jet lag.

It was a good transition to a completely foreign-feeling place because we still had American style lodging. When we got to our new house, we had some adjusting to do! It's a lot like camping. And we have these bugs that are like mini-ants on crack. They are superspeedy and basically act like vacuum cleaners because they completely devour any dead bugs or food that we don't clean up right away. It's pretty weird living in what is essentially a screened-in porch, although the geckos that crawl on the ceiling at night are pretty cute.

A couple days ago we had a bit of excitement when Clif caught a tiny one and it crawled around on him. The kids loved it and insisted that we let it go in their room so it could eat their bugs.

Simon's had a bit of a rough time of things the past week. Our last night in our Boise house, he got a spider bite that made his arm look a bit like Popeye's. I didn't think to get a picture until after the Benadryl so you don't quite get the full effect.

Then we went swimming/snorkeling in the ocean on Saturday where he fell and cut his hand on the coral. It's doing fine now, but he was nursing injuries for a couple days.

Everett is adjusting very well. He's generally pretty oblivious about many details and it's coming in handy! He doesn't seem to notice that things are not as sanitary as we're used to or that the grass is maybe a bit too rough to be rolling around on or that he's one of the only palagi's in his class at school -which means he doesn't really have to adjust at all! He did let out quite a squeal when he realized that the shell he picked up at the beach wasn't just full of dirt. The hermit crab that lived inside started to emerge on our way home!

And, as promised, we've got pictures of creatures! Our second morning here we woke up to find a poisonous centipede in our bedroom. We sprayed it with extra-strength Raid and it seemed to have no effect. Clif wanted me to step on it - in flip flops. There's no way that was happening; the thing was at least 4 inches long! So we got out the only trusty weapon we had - the frying pan!

the coolest moth

At first I thought a leaf was stuck to our house, but then I realized it was a huge moth - about 3 inches from wingtip to wingtip! I took a picture of it and then Simon took a picture of me taking a picture of it. Fun stuff.

I think it may be a Montana Sphingidae, but it might be some sort of Sphinx moth too. I can't tell because we never saw it with the wings fully opened. I may have to submit it to whatsthatbug.com to figure this one out!

today was a sad day

The kids had to let their new pet go. Laserbeam the Snail, formerly known as Pete the Snail, wasn't looking too good in his frisbee home so we had to let him loose.

I'm actually pretty surprised he lasted this long. Simon has carried him around non-stop, picking him up and putting him in the middle of the frisbee whenever Pete/Laserbeam got close to the edge (about every 5 minutes at first) and fell asleep one night with the frisbee tucked under the edge of his pillow with Pete/Laserbeam as close as he could get to Simon's head. Everett was really good at collecting all different kinds of food for him to eat and says he's really sad now that we don't have a snail anymore. Simon let him go near an irrigation ditch so he'd have plenty of water (Everett was busy playing Lego Starwars - shocking, huh?).

4th of July

The kids had fun celebrating the 4th. After sparklers, pop-its, and groundflowers we went to Clif's office to watch the fireworks.

And, of course, since we were outside after dark, we spotted more creepy Boise bugs. Two of these striped critters (ten-lined June Beetles) were crawling on our house.

I'm amazed at all the different spiders and beetles there are here. I guess that means that when we get to American Samoa you can expect to hear all about the creepy crawlers there!

Yikes!

Last night was the night that the full moon was supposed to appear to be the largest, something about the rotation of the earth in relation to the moon and other junk. I was determined not to miss it. Unfortunately. Because in my unimpressive moon watching I nearly stepped on one of these buggers. It scared the bejeezus outta me (I know, I need to toughen up on my fright level for ferocious and freaky looking insects). I don't think the larger-than-usual-looking moon was worth it.

Clif put it in a jar to show the kids in the morning. Everett didn't really care much, but Simon carried it around all day until finally deciding that we needed to "take the beetle to the mountain." He was very concerned that the thing had nothing to eat in its little jar. So we let it go far away from our house.

After some internet searching I found that it's a prionus californicus or prionus root borer. Yes, they bite. And they only come out at night. Nasty. I'm staying in.