New House

Okay, I promised no more critter posts, so I had to add this picture to this post. We found this at the end of our driveway this morning. I think it was hit by a car. When I saw how big it was, I said "Isaac, if one of those happened to come in the house, I can´t step on it, it´s too big!" He said, "you can´t step on it anyway, they jump." Yikes! The good thing is that all of these "little" (I swear all of the wildlife here is on steroids) creatures have been found outside, none inside. Thank Heavens!

This scorpion, in length, was about from my finger tips

to my wrist. He was a big guy (these pictures are actually close to life sized).

Spidey, poor thing.

So we moved. Yay! It´s got it´s pros and cons over the last house, but the bottom line is that the windows and doors are closeable. No more mosquitos. What a blessing! The most frustrating part is that it is very small. Although it is a three bedroom the owner decided to use one bedroom as a storage room for her stuff, so now we are a little stumped as to where to put our extra stuff. We were planning on putting together our three month food storage as soon as we moved in, but now we don´t know where to store it. I´ll have to work something out.

The other downside is there are a lot of little critters around (all outside though since I can close the windows and doors - anyone new to the blog, our last house had cinderblock windows, not glass and non closeable, and a metal gate for a back door. We had all kinds of things inside the house).

I´m sure many of you are tired of/grossed out by all my little critter posts, so unless I get any cooler pictures than these ones, I´ll cool it on the subject. But I can´t pass it up this time with these pictures. When we moved in we had a little "pet" spider on the back porch. She made me pretty nervous at first until I did some internet research. She looks very much like a Florida Garden Spider, not so harmless, only she is alot bigger. The FGS is about the size of a quarter while our little spidey was the size of, well, my open hand. Fingers included. But I asked a few neighbors and they said she wasn´t poisonous, so I was no longer afraid of her. But the neighbor was, so they poisoned her. I was actually a bit sad when I saw her dead in her web.

Then last week when we came home from church there was a visitor next to our front door. This nice, big, black scorpion. Isaac let me get a couple of pictures first, then he took care of it with a machete. I wasn´t so sad about that one. Our neighbors have said that there are a lot of trantulas around here, they mostly come out when the developers start digging in the neighborhood behind us. Everytime Ariana grabs one of Isaac´s shoes, I have this flash of a trantula coming out of it and biting her. I have started sticking my own hand in and checking first, just to make sure. Hopefully, they can´t get in the house.

Then last, but not least, two days ago the maintainance man found a large snake near the pool. It was hanging out under some roofing tins behind the maintainance closet. It´s called an "X" snake, apparently very poisonous. Oh great. So, I used to open our double sliding doors to let in some air, but now I suffer the heat. I don´t want to encourage any guests like these to come in the house.

Upside to the new house - love the pool next door. It is a nice size and during the day it is practically a private pool for us. Everyone else is working and at school. Ariana and I go out everyday. We love it!