Scorpions and snakes, spiders and other beasties

One of the more common 'friends' we have sharing our house. No, this spider is not sitting on gnarly old John's skin! It is on the back of a chair!

"Small" tortoise - Robbie's. The other, twice this size, is Maia's.

The two doves.

A tiny Woodstar hummingbird.

We may not yet have a zoo in Lumbisi, but this cannot be far away. What it was that bit John two weeks ago is still a mystery. Small Coral snake? Unlikely as the characteristic fang marks were not evident. Scorpion? Strong possibility - we have menacing, big black things hiding around the place, but so far they have only been known to get their stingers into dogs' paws. A bee? Perhaps. Venomous spider? Another possibility, though in truth most of the very many spiders which lurk in all corners, however big and ugly-looking, are not poisonous. Whatever it was, there was a dose of poison and secondary infections. All this led to 5 days admitted into hospital.

Our 'new' house would be the worst nightmare for an arachnophobe. Never have so many spiders been together in one place, inside and outside the house. Terrifying! Some are huge, hand size but almost all, it seems, are non-venomous. Poor Maia ended up in John's bed in the early hours one morning, after a "huge" spider wandered across her face duirng the night.

Not all the creepy-crawlies are nasties! Within hours of our arrival here in July, we got the hummingbird feeders up and ready. Within three hours we had our first visitors and since then, it has been non-stop traffic. At our house in Arenal, we reckoned we had maybe 6 species visiting the feeders. Interestingly here in Lumbisi, we are inundated with tiny, tiny woodstars, which we never saw in Arenal. Woodstars are very difficult to identify but all have a characteristic sound like a great bumble bee as they whoosh around, from feeder to feeder. We have also received visits from the rare Giant Hummingbird. (The photo is of a Woodstar.)

We have two white doves thriving here as well. Their's is a sad story. In May we opened a new football field at The British School Quito. The final part of the opening ceremony was the launching into the air of three white doves, who were supposed to signify that all was going to go well for the future. The three poor birds dropped like stones to the ground, at the feet of the youngsters who released them. No-one had bothered to teach the doves how to fly! Indeed they had probably been incarcerated in tiny cages since birth. John scooped them up and took them home to our house in Arenal. One, which was clearly not well at all, died soon after, but the other two soon learnt to fly, inside the big games room where we kept them. When we came to Lumbisi, we brought the doves with us and, after two weeks secured in a very large caged space, they were then released. The two doves have thrived! They are now handsome birds. They are friendly and are never far from us. Indeed they circle the house in the early mornings until we go out and feed them. They now have the liberty they deserve.

Of course we also brought our two tortoises with us from Arenal. In our previous house they were free to roam the garden. The only difficulty we had was locating them each morning, for their breakfast. The garden of our 'new' house in Lumbisi is just so vast that, despite being tortoise-secure, we would NEVER find them, once they were off the leash. So we keep them in a very large animal house, which has its own vegetation inside, where they seem very, very happy - certainly much happier than in our previous house. These two tortoises were given to John by a desperate Mum! Her son, Manuel, left the school where John works, to go and study in the States. As a youngster, he was already well known as a successful breeder of bull dogs. When Manuel left for the States, he left behind a house full of animals, including a small crocodile! Mum was supposed to care for the zoo! No way! She off-loaded the animals she could get rid of, and hence we became the owners of two Amazonian tortoises, one probaly about 5 or 6 years old and the other, a much bigger reptile, of unknown age.

So, the Lumbisi zoo is slowly getting itself up and running. Robbie and Maia want a dog! John's take on that is, "Fine!" but only as long as the two children can take full responsibility for their pet. We will have to wait a time for a dog! Wouldn't it be nice to have a llama? Seriously! They trouble is they spit and smell! Whatever other animals or birds do end up here, I do not think that we will go out 'shopping' for them. They will arrive for their own good reasons!