A bit on bugs

Here's the thing about bugs: I don't like them.

And when I say I don't like them, I mean they give me that leg hair growin', heebie jeebie givin', creepy crawly icky feeling that makes me want to scream and climb the nearest piece of furniture.


But the darn things LOVE me! It's like if you don't like cats and you visit your great aunt and twenty of her cats are purring and kneading your lap the whole time. It's like that, except the bugs are trying to eat me alive.

Even the strictly vegetarian ones will give up their lives of veggie-eunichism to come have their fill of my sweet, sweet blood.

Oh, and if you've forgotten, I live in the Amazon rain forrest. We've got bugs.
Current population is: Ants (so tiny you can barely see 'em, pretty tiny and completely invading and devouring anything remotely sweet or protein based in my kitchen, regular U.S. sized ones that live somewhat peacefully in the yard until they are on my sandal clad feet (then the biting commences), larger leaf cutter ants that love to show you how unproductive your life is as they cut, carry and devour an entire hibiscus flower... or bush, and these huge purpley/brown ones with ginormous heads and mandibles that look like tin snips, weird brown mole-like half mutant termite/ant crosses from a misguided bio-engineering program.....and that's just the ants. We also are trying to break the Guiness Book's record for largest number of Daddy longlegs in a single habitable residence (our ceilings are really high, so they're difficult to reach). We've seen so many beetles that we really only notice them if they have big rhino horns. One of those stayed on our screen the entire day last December 25th.
Natasha now asks, "Will we have a Christmas beetle visit us again next year?"

Oh, let's not forget the other arthropods: scorpions, silver dollar sized spiders that come out at night and crawl through the grass (or under our front door), a plethora of moths and butterflies (finally something fun!), ticks, fleas, centipedes, millepedes. If you've seen it on Discovery Channel, we can probably find it on our 4,000 square foot bit of land here in Santa Cruz.