Nose to Nose with wildlife- house encounters

A few years ago it was a tarantula that Kudra spotted in Zihuatanejo, GRO, Mexico. It came out of nowhere and was outside our palapa. It only had seven legs, one lost in some (probably unimaginable to us) kind of battle…

Kudra Mariposa Amiga was very careful with the arachnid, we let it walk toward our palapa and it disappeared in it shortly thereafter.

 

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Seven-legged housemate

 

About a year later we lived in a shared environment and while preparing a meal, I found a rat in the kitchen of a property in San Pedro la Laguna, Solola, Guatemala. It hid between many plastic bins I decided to move around when I was cooking a meal for everyone, which included about a dozen neighbors, and when that rat and I, when we had eye contact, I opened the kitchen door and called Kudra inside; she always likes to hunt, so with a few ninja moves of her nose, body and jaws got rid of lil’ dirty pest.

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Nope, you will not eat my food again! Hey, why aren’t you moving?

 

If a scorpion is in our presence, she sniffs cautiously around it, she just utters a sound, quite like a “Baa” to get my attention, pointing with her nose, eyes, her movements, all are following the stinging little critter until I get a hold of it. To this day and unlike me, Kudra never suffered a scorpion’s sting, I know she would not like it.

Going back to this post, last month it was an ugly and poisonous toad in San Ignacio, Belize that got her foaming at the mouth and lock-jawed (it really would not matter if the toad was easy on the eyes) until she got a good dose of juice of an entire lime rubbed on her gums. Of course, she hated it, but loved the man who gave me the “recipe” so long we were there.


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Poisonous amphibian

Regressing back to the story, because it is moving in a circular motion…
Yesterday morning Kudra spotted something scurrying through the shortly cut lawn grass toward the front door and even though there might be garter snakes as such, I urged her not to mess with it, but she was excited nevertheless and barking as it was slithering along the wall toward the door (which I closed, but the gap between the floor and door would have been fine).
It was not large. If it were, I would have been screaming and running bloody hell out of the yard onto the quiet street and waking my neighbors from their Siesta, it was perhaps 30 centimeters long.
I learned there are 59 non-venomous snakes in this region and 12 killers.
Kudra’s curiosity did not harass the snake much, it was completely docile and rather quickly Ssssed its path away, toward the lemon tree behind the bathroom, and possibly found a spacious home in the pile of rocks behind it. I have no idea if the yellow touched the red, but am quite sure the tip of the head was red.
Some men were clearing brush across the street last week and discovered a chunky boa constrictor they put out on the sidewalk. One of them said he’ll take it home, I really urged him not to, just let it roam freely where he can catch rats (even though the creature’s nose was constantly following Kudra’s movements. I figure because her temperature is higher than us humans, no?).
You know, even that this snake was tiny, I did not want Kudra to pester it, because baby piranhas might look cute to some folks, but I’d never touch them!

 

 

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Mmm, grapes and champagne…

 

Cover photo is a Scarlet Kingsnake. This snake does not get larger than 2 feet, so do believe is the one that became our new neighbor.
It is said if the yellow does not touch the red t is OK, but of course, there are exceptions, apparently an insect eater gets mistaken as the deadly Coral snake and gets decapitated with a shovel too many times, we give our regards to the poor creature.

(Originally posted on July 19th 2016 at https://www.facebook.com/DondestaKudra/notes)