What in the world is THAT???

I've had a series of unsettling buggy-type (critter-ish?) encounters lately. Just now, for example, I had taken a sip of water from a glass and subconsciously felt the urge to lick my lips. I found a tiny crumb of something in my mouth and becoming suddenly suspicious of it, spit it out on my hand. What is that tiny writhing thing? An ant! Ants come in all shapes and sizes here in Gabon, and you just never know where you'll find one - even in your mouth. Yuck!

Then last night, sometime in the middle of the night and out of a sound sleep, without warning I felt something on my chest. Thinking it was a sheet, I sleepily brushed it away - but felt something slimy wiggling away across my shoulder and up my neck! I yelled out, more from outrage than fear (but a little of both), sat bolt upright and turned on the light. The culprit was nowhere to be found, fortunately or unfortunately. I think it was likely a gecko, one of those harmless and ubiquitous inhabitants decorating our white walls (though I'm not entirely sure). I'd rather it have been a gecko than something else, as I generally kind of like geckos... especially the tiny miniature ones are quite cute. But not in the middle of the night! After this, I think we will not have our bed touching the wall at night while we sleep....That will also avoid another pitfall we've already experienced: gecko poop on our pillow. Yuck!

Yesterday it was so hot in the middle of the day that I took a shower because it was the only way to adequately cool off, since we don't have air conditioning. Just as I was stepping into the shower, 2 inches from my face I noticed a spider suspended in midair. It wasn't a big one (sometimes they are big here), but it had built quite the mansion for itself since my last shower the previous evening and there was a big cobweb to clean up. I don't remember if it was the same shower day or not - sometimes they all run together in my mind - but in a recent shower, I counted 11 tiny flies perched mostly inside the shower, and a few just outside. I killed them all, never suspecting that Gabon was bringing out the viscious side of me. Yuck!

This is not a complete rendering of the buggy tales of the last 24 hours - I've also had a few itchy bites from the no-see-em's (tiny flying insects), cleaned a spiderweb with its spider from a lamp, pulled bugs out of cups and killed ants with insecticide, unsuccessfully tried to kill a spider suspended from the ceiling in our bedroom, watched our kitties hunt a tiny gecko on our screened-in porch, and walked gingerly around the back side of our house for fear of seeing a snake (we found a 5-foot empty snake skin there a month ago and have yet to find the snake himself, though there's a hole leading under our house right there - here is the skin just exactly where we found it, next to the hole).

All this in the last day (or maybe two). Ecology is alive and well here in the jungle, and feels itself quite at home inside our house and in every nook and cranny of our lives here.