Category Archives: Insects and Bugs

Guess What I Found?!

“Guess what I found?” has been our newest game. It is kind of like the chance card on Monopoly. This could be something beneficial or not so much.

For instance, one of our first “guess what I found” moments was when I found the passionfruit flowers and fruit. Then another one was finding this creepy centipede in the palm trees.

Centipede

We have heard that Puerto Rico has no venomous snakes or spiders, but that you do have to watch out for these guys! Also, the ants are intense! Tiny little ants that feel like someone just threw a bunch of needles at your feet. We have been having a hard time feeding Kitty because only about 5 minutes after we set his food down the ants swarm his dish like a petri dish. And if you try to move it they start biting you! We are definitely going to have to find a solution for that!

As for Kitty himself, he spends almost his entire day as a lump under the covers of the bed.

Lump in the bed

He’s lump, he’s lump, he’s lump, he’s in our bed.

Kitty is definitely still freaked out. He comes out for a couple of hours a day, but if he hears the leaves rustle or any loud sound, he scurries back under the covers to hide. I took him out with me up on top of the cabana just to show him that there really is nothing to be afraid of, but I don’t think he believed me.

Kitty and Cassie
Kitty and me under the big mango tree

We are still doing quite a bit of work on the landscaping and have finally been able to drive the car into the courtyard after clearing away some massive weed trees that grew about three inches thick in just those past nine months. Britton bought a bow saw (thanks Matt for the recommendation) and hacked those things down.

BK and the sierra

I am bringing out a lot of Spanish vocabulary I haven’t had to use much in an office setting. Saw=Sierra, Wire=Alambre, Piedra de afilar= Sharpening stone, etc. Good practice using Spanish in our new daily life when we say “guess what I found” in the hardware stores.

A lot of you are worried we are working too much. Don’t worry. We also know how to play! We have gotten out and met some people too. We visited a few friends and played a little poker. We are planning on going to a concert event in Aguadilla this Saturday and we have taken lots of naps and eaten lots of “guest-what-I-found” delicious fruits from our property, the Econo or Edwards Grocery Stores or from the fruit vendors parked on the side of the road.

Quenepas
Not sure what these are…quenepas? They are from the property but mostly a huge seed inside

We have had a couple of other “guess what I found” moments. Britton was up on the top of the cabana with the laptop to transfer some pictures. He yelled down to me, “guess what I found?!” and I yelled back, “Um, cat poop?” and we laughed because apparently the roof of the cabana had been used by the local cats as a poop hot spot…but it turned out to be an ACTUAL hot spot. We found open WIFI on our roof! So great! I am standing here on top of the roof overlooking the wooden house and ocean writing this!

The not-so-great thing is what we did NOT find in our bags….our camera battery charger. I think we left it plugged into the wall in our kitchen in Greeley! Ugh. Once our battery runs out we won’t be able to take more pictures or videos, so we are going on a quest to try and find one (Mom if you read this can you check in our Greeley house?).

So daily we have little wins and little challenges. It has been the perfect balance. We still have a few things we need to sort out like the zafacones for the Rincon trash pick up are apparently all out, so we have to haul out any trash we make.

All in all, every day has been an adventure with new finds around every corner.

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Flashback to Puerto Rico: August 17, 2005

Observations of the Island, Trip to Ceiba and Survivalism in Guanica

In PR

This is the 7th Part in the Honeymoon Flashback Series. I would like to finish sharing this whole journal that we wrote on our honeymoon in 2005 before we leave to start our new Puerto Rico life adventure this fall 2013. Go here for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6.
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Today we got up around 9, hung out a  little and then went down to breakfast. Unfortunately we were a little late since we found out they closed breakfast at 10 and we got there around 10:30am. But they went ahead and served us. It was a good home-cooked style meal with fresh fruit for only about $8 for the two of us! And because we had been eating so much fried food here on this island, it was a much needed health booster.

Even though the US has an obesity problem, it seems that Puerto Rico has it even worse. I think it is for sure worse than Colorado which I believe is the leanest state. There is so much fried food everywhere, especially fried chicken, pollo frito!, places everywhere and many of the people look like they enjoy it a little too much!

Even the Chinese food places serve fried chicken instead of grilled chicken in the chicken and vegetable dishes, but the kicker was that they served it with both white rice AND French fries of all things which we thought was so weird. They also don’t have unsweetened iced tea. All the drinks are super sweet here. It’s also hard to get just a cup of iced tap water like we usually do when we eat-out in Colorado.

Anyhow, back to the trip. We spent some more time down at the thermal pool which is nice and relaxing. Then we packed up and headed out.

Today was a day of driving. We drove up the mountains, down the mountains, to the ocean and back again. We drove the ruta panoramica (Panoramic Route) and Highway 53, we took toll roads and back roads. We were definitely tourists taking lots of pictures everywhere we went.

plantation

We saw farmland -what looked like bananas or plantains and maybe coffee growing on the sides of steep green hills. There are some interesting plants and flowers on this side (eastern) of the island.

We went through Humacao and found a Chili’s very easily and were able to finally use our gift card! We also saw another lighthouse -we have made a little side game of trying to see and photograph all the lighthouses on the island.

100_1919 100_1862 100_1859 100_1838 100_1873 100_1779

Finally we arrived here at the Ceiba Country Inn and are trying to rest -again for the second time. Our first room was infested with some sort of biting bugs. So the owners moved us into another bugless room -thank goodness! The owners are nice Americans from Rhode Island. They have adopted like 3 dogs, all former strays. Poor things. Dogs and cats run around stray all over the place here and the females seem to all be pregnant or nursing.

Ceiba
The view from the place we stayed in Ceiba

Well, off to Vieques tomorrow!

Oh, I forgot, on the day we traveled to Guanica, when we also stopped by the Guanica Dryland Forest, we went for a hike because we saw a sign for the old Fort Capron ruins. So we decided to walk the 5 kilometers it said it was from where we could park. We got REALLY hot though and Britton took off his shirt and gave it to me to wear on my head as a type of hat. Then we kept walking and walking and hiking and walking but still we didn’t see any ruins.

Spiky plant and hat
Watch out for those spikes!

Finally we decided to turn around about an hour later when we saw thunder clouds and lightning. We tried to hustle to avoid the rain and I had to watch my feet to avoid tripping over the rocks. So as I was looking down I ran smack into a thorny tree branch and poked my eye. My eyelid started bleeding but at least my eyes had been closed at the time of impact!

Termite hive
Termite hive?

We also saw a huge nest of some sort that we can only imagine must be a termite hive. Britton developed some blisters on his shoulders from the sun and sweat. By the end of the hike we were super happy to the see the car (with A/C and water) once more.

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Removing Africanized Bees from Walls in Rincon Puerto Rico

On our last trip here in May/June we managed to get ahold of someone from the University of Mayaguez to help us remove the bees that were in the walls of the upstairs bedroom in the wood house (you can read more of the Bee Backstory here). In summary, we found out that there wasn’t just one hive of bees, but FOUR! So our new university bee friends were able to remove one of the colonies, but couldn’t get the other three. When we came back for this trip we really wanted to get the remaining three hives out of the walls.

We tried calling our bee guy, Jose again, but he apparently didn’t have time or didn’t want the work, so we thought we wouldn’t be able to get the rest of the bees out this trip. Then we lined up the plumber to work on the sink in the studio cabana (we’ll write about that later) and just happened to tell him about the bees in the house. He said that while doing plumbing he often runs into bees in the water lines/boxes and knew of a guy who loved bees and could easily remove them for us (for a fee).


Staying away from the bees-at the beach

And so that is how we met Enrique. Enrique definitely does love bees and was enthusiastic and ready to remove all the rest of the
three hives right then and there. He went in to do the job with no bee suit, no gloves or any protection. He apparently just tore down the wall panels where the bees were located, grabbed the queen with his bare hands and the rest of the bees followed into the cardboard boxes. He made really quick work of it.

He told us they would be agitated in the move and that we might want to leave for a few hours to avoid being stung.  So in that time we went down to the beach and hung out, got some food and came back. In the same time it took the methodical, cautious and precise Jose to remove one hive, Enrique took out three! We returned and there were a lot of bees still buzzing around but Enrique assured us that it was safe to go into the house to see his finished work because the remaining bees wouldn’t sting if they didn’t have a queen to protect (I was still a little freaked out by all of them buzzing around my body).

He had removed all of the bees from inside the walls as well as their honey and comb. He offered us to keep the honey and comb, but we weren’t sure what to do with it. We did get to taste it, and it was really good -sweet and waxy! Britton managed to take a little video of Enrique showing us the removal and the honeycomb afterward. We are definitely relieved to have the bees gone and hopefully by tomorrow all the orphaned ones will realize their queen is gone and they will scram as well.  Although we are a little sad to not have all the thousands of little pollinators working on our fruit trees. Maybe someday we’ll get a hive of our own…just not inside our house 🙂

 

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Grasshopper Gluttons

We have a ton of grasshoppers out front in our flower beds. Whenever we walk past the flowers you can just hear them jumping to hide somewhere else. So Britton and I decided we would harvest this chicken delicacy.

When we fed them to the chickens we thought they would go nuts. But no. The chickens liked them, but were not as enthusiastic about them as I thought they would be. It was as if they were saying, “yah, we get those all the time out here”. But they still ate them all! Good protein and omega-3s for our eggs! Circle of life and all that.


Yum! A jar of grasshoppers 🙂

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