Tuesday, 17 March 2009

Close to nature

My rat (should I say 'my'? Am I emotionally involved now?) is still at large. He has wised up to my glue traps. I hope that means he has moved on (Rebecca?) and not chewing the electric cables. Though that would be another way of seeing him off.

Ratty is not the only creature to have moved in recently. There is a huge lizard in the girls' bedroom. Not monitor lizard huge, but about 7 inches long and slimey, a lizard, definitely, not a gecko. He likes to hide on the mosquito nets, and jumps out at me at when i put them down at night which makes me scream. My first instinct was "kill it, kill it" (I am a born conservationist) but he doesn't bite and he eats the mozzies, so I've decided I can live with Luke the Lizard. I just wish he weren't so slimey and...animal.

My feelings are more ambivalent about Steve the Spider who waved at me while I was having a shower this morning. Steve is a hairy spider. Small, but hairy, like a tarantula. He is black and white, unlike a tarantula. Is he poisonous? Will he kill me? Should I kill him first?

4 comments:

Le laquet said...

Steve the spider would have to go! Conservationist or not - gone!

BaronessBlack said...

I think you're right about the lizard. We had lizards in Nairobi, and they do keep the flies down. (The Swahili think it's unlucky to live in a house without lizards in it!)
Not so sure about spiders. I had a plastic (not glass!)cup and postcard at the ready to take them outside.
Although when we came back from safari and found a nest of snakes down the side of the sofa, we did take them a LONG way away!
No clue about the rat - have you tried warfarin?

Rebecca said...

Rodents, cockroaches, mosquitoes and obviously dangerous snakes: extermination. Large spiders, unscary snakes and most insects: relocation. Other reptiles and bats: toleration in return for consumption of insects. Voila!

hexe said...

No question - kill the spider.