It's hard to get your children to maintain an open mind about things in life that they have never seen before when you yourself scream when you see THIS swimming in your pool one morning.
Can anyone tell me what it is? The Malagasy have a word for it but don't know what the translation is in French or English. I'm not even sure that it's an insect. It might be a small animal. Yikes!
On another note, I took this photo just outside the Jumbo grocery store. The photo doesn't really do them justice. Trust me. They are HUGE. We are talking the size of my hand. I don't think I have ever seen spiders this size before. I haven't shown them to the Bambina yet!
The cockroaches are also the size of the palm of my hand but in my earnest bid to get rid of them from my kitchen as soon as f-ing possible, I didn't bother taking a picture.
4 comments:
I am assuming, judging by your description of it's size, that is a hunstman spider. If you want to REALLY give yourself the heebie jeebies google huntsman clock spider. Eeek.
I think that the other bug is a water boatman.
http://www.enature.com/fieldguides/view_default.asp?curGroupID=4&shapeID=1011
As for the wild cockroaches... just do what they do in the southern US and call them "palmetto bugs" then they are no longer cockroaches. Snark.
Katya is right.
Just call them something benign. When I first saw the giant cockroach walking lazily into my office, I screamed a bloody murder and jumped on my desk. When entire office staff gathered into my office and explained that he is just a Palmetto bug (sounds almost poetic, does it not?) I was much relieved and got down from my desk.
Just keep an eye on the poisonous ones.
Olga
OK Ok must think Palmetto bug. Katya. I don't know. The water boatman has wings near its head whereas this creature had little swim flippers coming out from behind. See photo. I checked Wikipedia re huntsman spiders and although they look similar, Wiki says that Huntsman spiders don't spin webs and the spiders that I saw were all living in enormous webs in the tree outsie the Jumbo store.
Olga, there are very few poisonois things here (of course, I say that, and no doubt now I will experience something poisonous...).
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