Wild Life

     During the last two and a half months here in Cambodia we have met many of the local critters.  Most of them we do not get friendly with.  A few have been short term pets.  Many of them have made me scream.  Did I mention that I don't like spiders?  We have big spiders here.  They live both inside and outside. 

The couple on the left was caught this way...making it a good time for science.  The one on the right sounded like someone answering their phone, "Hello?"  We hear lots of frogs outside.  When it rains they sound like a herd of cows... moo moo.  The first time I heard it I wondered if the cow we often see nearby had a bunch of friends over.

There were two gecko's living in our living room when we got here.  The tokay stayed in our cage after being caught by our awesome friend. It was fun to watch the first few days, but it was hard to catch enough bugs for it to eat, and eventually it was released into the wild in front of our house.  We still see him and his friends outside at night when we leave on the patio lights to attract snacks for them.

 This green snake was sitting near our dining table one afternoon when we got home from shopping... we were told by a local that they probably won't kill you, but they can hurt you pretty bad.  Paul wanted to catch him and put him in our tank, but there is no way I'd be ok with having a snake in the house on purpose!  He got swept out to the patio, but we haven't seen him since.

 The kids have found lots of tiny caterpillars around.  This guy was outside and only about half an inch long.  There were lots of even tinier ones in the house building cocoons on the walls.  The kids collected about a dozen of them, and a couple actually hatched and we saw the tiny, but ugly moths. 

After

Before

   There are plenty of these spiders around here.  This one was missing a couple of legs and was still very hard to kill... but we got him!  Just yesterday we had another like this, with all his legs and bigger around than my palm.  He was inside the house next to the kids where they were playing.  James spotted him next to Hannah's foot and now we know she doesn't like spiders to be that close to her.  I was sooooo glad that Paul was home to get him.