Housemates: Minimum of Four Legs

My favourite housemate: Bob the baby gecko

It’s been a little over a week  that I’ve moved into my comfy plywood walled Villa Kunterbunt and there’s been a lot happening. The first two typhoons passed Guiuan, luckily they stayed on the water and didn’t make landfall in Guiuan. Still they were pretty depressing – amazing how much noise rain can make on a metal roof such as on Villa Kunterbunt. You can find short a snapshot on my first two typhoons here. Except for that, my housemates have continued to accumulate.

 

Bigger than the diameter of a tennis ball – I present, Biddy, the spider.

The baby Gecko Bob, who moved in during typhoon Glenda (I opened the door and in he came) is my favourite. Not so popular is Biddy, the GIANT spider. Too fast to even think about catching her, she disappeared into the ceiling after showing off her impressive size. I could hear (!!) her walk on the insulation. During the rain there was also a frog, who showed off amazing climbing skills when it went up the wall, I never saw it again, who knows, one of the other housemates might have gotten to it.

I also share the house with at least one or two mice. I’m not sure if they’re mice or rats so I did what any scientist would do and turned to look at their poo. When I typed in rat poo, google readily suggested ‘rat poop picture’ and I’m happy to say that there’s quite a lot of online resources helping the unknowing individual to identify animal crap. I must have another proper look once I’m home but to me it looks like mice poop. Though I’m not sure if that’s any better.

When it rains there’s a lot of frogs, sometimes they come in for a visit.

Luckily they’re not aggressive towards me. Though at times my floor would probably look like a minefield to Buddhist monks. But, there’s nothing to do about it. The house is open, the kitchen has a woven window and there’s lots of holes for them to slip through, so co-habitation is the only option.

And of course there are the mosquitos. They are vigilant. One millimetre of skin without mosquito spray and they start sucking away that precious blood of yours. I’d happily say only a dead mosquito is a good mosquito, but radiolab as so often has

opened my mind to the fact that possibly we actually might not want to kill all mosquitos.

Finally, my landlords have two dogs. After feeding them a bit of left over sausage and spaghetti I’m quite popular. Though the younger one is even more friendly towards me. He never comes into my house but happily greets me when I come home. I’ve named him Mr. Kurasava. The older one I called Shy George.*

 

 

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*By now I’ve found out that Mr. Kurasava is actually called Chum-Boy and Shy George’s name is Siwan, after a typhoon that he surprisingly survived as a pup.