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...

pictures

Larsen's cove

Everett's handcrafted "berthday" card

Simon

Nu'uuli Falls

weird samoa caterpillar thing at the waterfalls

weird samoa slug thing on our house

weird samoa slug thing in our house

weekend fun, but not for Clif

It was an interesting weekend. Clif got bit by some tropical bug - literally. He woke up Friday with a small bite on his arm, 3 hours later it was a big red swollen crater with a red blotch around it and a red line going up to his armpit, 3 hours after that it was even bigger and he had a fever of 102 and was pretty out of it. That's when we went to LBJ to see if we could track down a doctor. Luckily, we spotted a friend of ours, who also happens to be a doctor, on our way in who could see Clif (thank you, Matthew!). I've heard that getting in to see a doctor can be quite an adventure. Fortunately, it wasn't this time! So Clif stayed home and slept all weekend and took antibiotics while the bite got bigger and the crater in the middle got deeper... ew. Yesterday it finally started to look like it was healing.

The kids and I didn't do much. We watched some movies, went to Faga'alu for a little while, and went to the pool, but mostly we took it easy. At Faga'alu, Everett was going to get to go scuba diving - when he found out he was so excited and started dancing around! But before he got the chance, we had to leave for his friend's birthday party. He wanted to dive so badly that he was willing to miss the party, and it wasn't until Melanie told him that she was sure he'd get to do it another time that he would leave!

We're looking forward to a Thanksgiving umu tomorrow - happy Thanksgiving to everyone we won't see there!

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.

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.