Housemates and neighbours
on Sally in Namibia (Namibia), 09/Sep/2009 12:41, 34 days ago
I used to have a housemate called Sarah. She was from Australia and is the benchmark by which I have judged my other housemates - she did not eat my food, she did not make annoying noises and she did not bite me or otherwise attack me.Sadly the same cannot be said of my houseguests below:This is a wall spider. It is harmless and eats mosquitoes so would seem to be a good housemate EXCEPT mine seem to think the floor is also a wall and take great delight in hiding under furniture and then making me jump by running out at me. Not good housemate behaviour.This is a stick insect. No noticeable behaviour, irritating or otherwise - very good housemate.Mosquito. It bites you. It can give you potentially fatal malaria. It hides and then comes out whining in your ear as soon as you turn the light out or even better wakes you in the middle of the night whining in your ear. If you squash it after it's eaten blood splats everywhere and you are left wondering whether you would prefer it to be your own or someone elses blood. Bad and unwelcome housemate. Doom at every opportunity.These wasps are all around my house. They don't really bother me but someone told me that if I do attack one or try to kill it then the others will remember and hunt me down.....seemingly good housemate with potential to go BAD!The little black things are weevils (dead-which is the way I like them). I had a major infestation (see post 'A Cautionary Tale') but there are still remnants lingering on. They are quite strong - i found one draggin a grain of rice which was about twice it size. A well placed fingernail puts paid to these little buggers.These are teeny ants - hard to spot when they are on their own but luckily there are usually lots of them. I'm not too bothered by them - they only eat my food after I've finished so in effect are cleaning up after me until I can be bothered to clean up after myself.These ants are different to the ones above - they are bigger and they live by the kitchen sink. Not too much of a problem except they seem to be tunnelling through the wall so they leave heaps of sand all the time. There are other heaps of sand around the house which make me suspect termite infestation - hopefully I move out before the house falls down!This is a bit of a pathetic example of the other big menace - cockroaches. I don't know whether to be sad or glad that there hasn't been a big one recently for my to photograph before Dooming it to death. When we first moved in there were loads of them but they are luckily infrequent now. Hopefully it will stay that way.Last but not least this is Colin previously known as Charlie. He's a chameleon who arrived yesterday. He is great and is going to have a blog entry all to himself in due course so this is just his introduction.NB These are not all my housemates, just the ones that stand still long enough for me to photograph them. Others include brightly coloured agama lizards, yellow eyed mongeese in the back garden. plenty of birds and (probably) a few snakes! If I do get pics I will add them in due course.