June 4, 2013
I’ve lost count of which day
Another cultural difference between the Tico culture and my
own is their respect for all forms of life—including the bugs and spiders that
I am so quick to kill by smashing or sucking up in the vacuum when I find them
in my house. They feel that they are encroaching upon nature’s territory.
Instead of killing those critters they find in the house, they will take them
outside and let them go. I saw my tico mama catch a moth that was fluttering
about in the kitchen and take it outside. Trying to follow suit, I found a
spider on the lamp in my bedroom. I scooted him onto a brochure I have
collected and went to take him outside. However, as spiders are likely to do,
he jumped/fell off before I got to the door. Oops. At least he was no longer in
my bedroom, nor did I smash him.
When I visited the butterfly garden, it also included a
section on some of the less pretty critters of Costa Rica—beetles, scorpions,
tarantulas, and cock roaches. I told the owner (who is a transplanted Canadian)
that I typically smash scorpions and she wasn’t happy. They play an important
part of the ecosystem. That is where I draw
the line. I will continue to smash scorpions, especially because the place I
most often see them is outside our cabin at Camp Esperanza. My rationalization
is if the mama scorpion can eat her young if they do not climb on her back
quickly enough once they hatch, the world will be OK with me smashing a few of
them a year.
Colt at the farm where we rode horses--one blue eye and one brown eye
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