Invasion!

I'm surprised this hasn't happened sooner - either in St. Kitts or Florida. Both places are tropical. Tropical = bugs. BIG bugs. You'll note I'm used to critters: NYC = roaches/waterbugs; AZ = red ants, huge spiders, & scorpions; St. Kitts = centipedes and mice. But does one ever really get used to them? I usually go out of my way to not have them, and we never had a single roach on Jacumba. But guess what happened Sunday night?

Eeek!

I went to bed, turned off the light around 10pm, and after awhile I heard Zura going after something. Jack jumped off the bed and headed into the living room. Uh oh. That's never good. I got up, went into the kitchen, turned on the light, and Zura had opened the trash/pantry closet door and ran off with something in her mouth. I looked inside the pantry and a whole bunch of HUGE cockroaches took off in various directions inside the closet. Slam! I went to help Zura (I didn't want the one she had to escape), but she had hers 1/2 eaten, so I went back to the pantry and cracked the door open. There were roaches everywhere. Roach poop or eggs everywhere. What, did one explode?! 

None of that was in there yesterday (at least not on the shelves), and I had taken the trash and recycling out that morning. I started pulling things out, one at a time, and every time I did, the cats and I went after whatever came out or off of it. You name it, and there was a bug on it: a roll of plastic green fencing, Christmas paper, a piece of outdoor-umbrella pipe, a clear tarp, cloth shopping bags, plastic shopping bags, paper shopping bags (a possible source for roach eggs) - everything. Either live roaches or their little black offings were on it all. Ick. Seriously, ick. 

The only good news was that there wasn't any food in there other than an unopened bag of pretzels and a closed container of Crystal Light. The three of us were doing pretty well until one critter scurried underneath the couch. I lifted the sofa and Jack disappeared. The couch was heavy, and I couldn't get Jack to come back out. I finally found my inner Hulk and hitched the sofa up on its side so I could pull Jack out (sans roach) and set the couch back down. Both cats stayed on that roach while I tackled the rest of the closet, and although Zura was licking her chops, I'm still not sure she got it. 

I shook everything outside (sweating profusely by now), took all the shopping bags & tarp out to the trash/recycling bin (after having to get dressed first since the cans were at the curb for morning pickup), and went into the bathroom to get the little plastic sweeper-bin thing so I could sweep up all the turds. Only to find the sink covered in tiny sugar ants. Covered. (There must have been a bit of toothpaste somewhere.) Aaaaaaaaaagh! I grabbed the bleach bottle and sprayed the crap out of everything, took the bin, and went back to the empty kitchen pantry to deal with the turds and one more roach. It was smaller and faster, so I ended up spraying the crap out of it with bleach. Would that kill it? Who knows, it disappeared into a shelf crack. 

When I swept up the kitchen floor (which I had just mopped on Saturday), there were a whole bunch of ants (two different kinds - some small/some large) under the cat-food feeder because apparently Zura had a 1/2 eaten roach under there as well. More bleach. Sweep, sweep.

As if that wasn't enough, when I opened the computer to type an email to Michael to tell him of my horror, a bunch of tiny ants came out of the laptop and ran across the screen. Aaack - THEM!!!!

Twitch, twitch. I ended up developing a freak-out rash on my neck (probably from all that bleach, but it was all I had), and then lay in bed with with my eyes wide open until well past midnight, convinced something would crawl across me (and dreading my ever-precise internal 5am wakeup call if sleep ever came). The cats sleep tucked up against my legs, and every time their fur touched me, I jumped. Not that I wasn't glad to have them there to protect me.

UPDATE Monday morning: I guess the roach under the couch survived. No longer. I'm too scared to open the pantry, and I'm pretty over these things. Please be over...

Another Week(end) in Key West

I've had a hard time getting motivated. Every time I do anything that entails going outside, I come back and have to hang my bra out to dry. I even sweat while I'm moving full speed on my moped. For someone who loves heat to abnormal proportions, my frustration with this heat is really saying something. Between the steam and the downpours, I haven't gotten much past morning runs. I get soaked on them too, but I don't care.

With plans rained out all week, I ended up working on the calendar (among other things), which showed me all the things I wasn't doing.

This morning, we had a visit from what I'm pretty sure was a woodpecker. Cool.



Jack saw it too.

It's LobsterFest weekend and it started with over 400 people signed up for a bar crawl Friday night (yes, there's a bar crawl for every occasion here). No one's talked about it today (Saturday), so I'm not sure if it was canceled due to weather or what. Saturday brought another street fair. It also brought more rain. Things weren't looking good for awhile there with thunderstorms the whole morning, but by about 1pm, we finally caught a break.

There must have been a cruise ship in because this event was pretty crowded. I'm sure the lobster part had something to do with it too.

You've got to appreciate these guys' Lobsterfest spirit. There were quite a number of people proudly sporting these hats. Don't you wonder when this headwear will be broken out again in the future? Kind of like buying those huge sombreros in Tijuana; it seems like a good idea at the time.



Obviously there was lots of lobster. People were standing in long lines for them, so I don't think there's going to be much in the way of leftovers. If anyone ever does this with popcorn, soft pretzels, or french fries, I'm so in.

There was a free street concert too, but the bands were country or rock, as usual. Country is to Key West like soca/calypso is to the Caribbean. You better get used to it!

I normally love street fairs, but after enduring drunk people stumbling into me (with sloshing cups), spitting within inches of my feet (?!), and yelling into my ear and past me to their friends a block away, not to mention having to avoid the buttery hands of lobster eaters and the melting ice cream cones of clueless kids, I was rather glad I had saved part two of my day for last.

I finally made it to the Butterfly & Nature Conservatory. It's the first "museum" here I've had to pay for, but I did get a local's discount, so that was cool.

As soon as you walk into the conservatory, you're inundated with butterflies.

There was such a variety, and it was so much fun to look for them. Can you spot this one before the closeup?


I was surprised by all the colorful birds, too. We had a lot of this colorful foliage in our "yard" in Arizona to attract hummingbirds (and butterflies), so I was rather surprised there weren't hummingbirds in here. Maybe they eat butterflies (?).


This bright orange one was my favorite. I sort of began stalking it.

We had been told that a bird had just had two chicks, and I thought these were the two they were talking about.



But then saw these (Chinese Button Quails). Awwww.



The conservatory has recently acquired two flamingoes. It was hard to catch them with their heads up.



There was even a turtle.

Talk about fitting a lot into a small space, and yet it was so serene. At the end you could hear everyone saying the same thing I was thinking. No one wanted to leave. But eventually I trudged for the exit, checking myself out in the mirror to make sure no critters had hitched a ride.

I slowly sauntered home and thought I'd stick my new friend onto one of my favorite property walls. The fence is made up of weirdly shaped concrete with mirrors stuck into it and is totally something I would do.



I've jogged down this way a few times and never noticed this tiny park tucked in here.



And then just before I got home I noticed this. Hmmmmmmmmm.

I was so incredibly tempted to see if the keys would fit into the ignition. Road trip!!

And yes. As soon as I got home, I had to hang my bra out to dry...