Wildlife

I realized after my last post that I forgot to tell you about some encounters with wildlife, though not upclose (thankfully)...As some of you know, I am deathly terrified of snakes....well, one night on the way home from church Rosaura, my host begins to tell me that someone had run over a snake on the highway and that her brother, who lives next door, just killed one of those same snakes on his patio that night! I asked if they were poisonous, and she assured me that they were deadly poisonous :) As we pulled in to the driveway, I had to get down out of the car in order for the son to climb out and open up the garage door...Right before I was going to climb down she told me to watch where I stepped...Well, of course it was really dark out since it was 10:00 at night, so I jokingly asked her how many minutes is was to the nearest hospital! Thankfully, there were no encounters for me that night...

In working with the women´s groups out in different communities we are often taking Rosaura´s jeep onto dirt roads for about thirty minutes through different palm plantations and vegetation in order to get to the communities. On these drives, I have now had the privilege to see two iguanas along the way. They will be in the middle of the dirt road, a bright green, and as we approach they begin to saunter off in that lizardly way....It is so fun to see these animals in the wild and not at a pet store somewhere! They are so full of life, not like the one we caught in Lima one time that slowly died because it wouldn´t eat the lettuce we gave it...

On the way back from a community called San Antonio, we passed this man who had a dead snake hanging from a tree. Rosaura stopped, and I saw that he had cut off the head of the snake and had it hanging from the tree. He was skinning it and told us that he was removing the fat to help with his lower back which was sore and his daughter who had a cold...then, the meat they would use to eat! I was just glad it was already dead...they call those snakes ¨horse killers¨ because they suffocate the horses and then eat them I suppose....

The last encounter occurred last night when I was at church. The place where we meet has a roof, but the sides are open to the outdoors....We were in the middle of a sermon, when this grasshopper the length of my entire hand comes flying in down the middle aisle, and then unexpectedly turns into this one aisle to land where two girls and their mother were sitting. It was so funny to watch these girls do everything in their power no to scream in the middle of the sermon. They were able to get the grasshopper to the end of the row, but the girls were to afraid to continue sitting in that row next to the grasshopper, so they discreetly got up and changed seats....

Those are my only encounters thus far, and thankfully they hav been at enough of a distance, for me to be able to enjoy them!