Critters

Like our last location, we have a lot of critters to put up with. No, I don’t mean the tourists… or do I?

The first thing we noticed was that a cat had been sleeping on our outside cushions during the night. Not only that but he had the nerve to jump up on the wall and casually wander through the patio while we were sitting there. By the time I grabbed my water sprayer with vinegar in it he was gone. I did get some revenge though, I put up a grill from the BBQ where we saw it jump up. Early one morning I heard a crash and suspected that the cat had met the grill. I got a smile out of that.

Again, sitting and minding our own business when I happened to look up and see that some dogs had gotten into our tall garbage can. How they got in there I don’t know; it wasn’t even turned over. A few badly thrown rocks later and they wander off with a look of contempt. I’m sure they will be back.

It’s not so bad if the local gang of turkeys wander in as… well, you know, Christmas. We also get the odd chicken or two but we mostly ignore them.

The wander inners are the biggest problem so I ordered some wire mesh to put up to keep them out. It won’t be delivered for a week or two so I’ll have to just cuss until then.

We are planning to develop the roof so we ordered a large shade cloth and some bits and bobs to put it up with. It’s rectangular but we only have three anchor points. There is a large umbrella with a heavy concrete base, so after discussions with Blanca, it was decided to use that as the fourth anchor point.

I had to move the thing so gathering all my puny muscles together, I gave it a mighty heave and a scorpion ran out from underneath. I dropped the heavy base but unfortunately for the scorpion, it chose that second to run back underneath. It left a tiny baby behind about 1/4″ long so I got Rosalie to dispatch that as I didn’t have any shoes on.

Getting up one morning I went into the bathroom and saw a small cockroach. I went and got my awesome roach-killing spray bomb and taught it a lesson it won’t forget, mostly because it’s dead. I looked in the shower and there was a spider. I grabbed the bath mat and thought I was in for a swift kill. Boy was I wrong! The thing took off like Donald Trump going to a republican rally. It even went straight up the tiled wall. I happened to have the spray bomb still handy so gave it a squirt and hoped that I killed it.

One night, I woke up as something fell on my face. I batted it off hoping it wasn’t a spider. Things started to settle down again when I felt something touch my arm. I lept out of bed and found my flashlight. I didn’t want to wake Rosalie by turning on the overhead light. It took a while but I finally tracked the beast down. It was a bug about the size of a pea. I evicted it from the bed and went back to sleep.

If this wasn’t enough, some sort of wasp was starting to make a nest right above where we sit outside. A can of Raid and a broom soon took care of that.

We had a few ants when we first got here but after a few drops of Ant B-Gone, they went.

We have sprayed enough toxic chemicals around this place to warrant a Hazmat team. I don’t think it’s worth bothering about though: this is Mexico after all.