THE TAKEOVER CONTINUES...

I have been asked by a friend if it was possible to put something next to the snakes (previous post) to show some perspective. Unfortunately, the gardner had buried the dead snakes from the previous post. Not to worry, the very next night we had another kill. Quicker than I can steal a piece of licorice, I kicked off my crocs so I could show just how big this snake was. Each croc is 12 inches long (I measured) which means this snake was just over 2 feet long! We are also pretty sure that this is a Herald Snake. Not poisonous, but they do bite. Three snakes in as many nights. Yowza! The following critters all call our place home...

These things are EVERYHWERE! Never had seen a single one until the rains started last week. Now we have about 10 in the house at any given time. This one is displayed against Mike's foot- figure it is about 9 inches long. In the bottom picture, you can see all of it's millions of legs. All those little circles are the legs. Really nasty things. The worst part is that Anna is not scared of these and PICKS THEM UP and carries them around!!

Don't know the name of this guy, but we call him the "leaf bug." They truly look identical to a leaf. Amazing. We all got a big kick out of putting it near Margo, which made her do her Dalmatian "smile." I found this turtle today as I was walking to the garden to get some basil. It had fallen off the patio and was upside down flailing all around. This is they type of critter that does not bother me. We decided to let him go but told the kids that if we find him again we can keep him.

Full disclosure, these bats are not from our yard. They live at a nearby house and I think it's totally freaky how they hang there ALL DAY LONG. There are 2 big palm trees that they live in. Each tree probably has about 20 bats. F-R-E-A-K-Y!!!

Big, lizard with a beautiful blue head. Again, he doesn't bother me in the least.

This is Lucy, we are fostering her until she gets adopted. She also lives in our yard, so she makes the cut for this week's blog. She is a sweet dog; a Ridgeback-Malawian street dog mix. I decided Margo needed needed a friend to get her fat butt out of the house and get some exercise. If Margo had her way she would lay on the couch with potato chips and the remote all day. Lazy, lazy, lazy. Not any more. Ha!

Garden update: Our garden is going strong. One complaint...quantity control. For exammple, I asked the gardener to plant lettuce. Next thing I knew, we had about 30 heads of ripe lettuce. 30 heads, at the same time. This is a lot of lettuce. We were able to eat about 10 heads before the rest rotted.

And now for the children. This week the kids had "International Day"." They had to dress up in "American" clothes or their national costume. I also had to make "american food." What is American food (that you can get in Malawi!!) I opted for pigs in a blanket (after having to make the crescent rolls from scratch!)

Have a great week!