What was that?

What Was That!? A hodge podge of short stories by Colleen

the woolly billed toe tickler (I made that up)

It´s Panamá. There are so many species of birds and bugs alone that are new to us here.  Often we can´t identify any of them to anything we have seen in the states.

We recently enjoyed the company of Jamie, Allen and Kristen Bunch from Indiana. The girls were awesome company to me as Alan and Allen went off to the jungle.  Kalea really enjoyed their time too. She would bring them story books and cozy up with them in the hammock… One day, Jamie and Kristen did some work in the garden.  I remember something along the lines of Jamie calmly saying… “Uhh, Colleen….there´s a giant spider in the garden…maybe a tarantula?” … I go down from the house to see what she´s talking about…We decided it was definitely a tarantula. It was big, black, and fuzzy.  In my opinion, pretty.  I´ve never had any prejudices towards spiders before…I always assume they are eating something much more creepy, of which, I prefer not to see…We tried to launch it over the fence with a shovel into the neighbors yard…(ha! Ha! No one lives there)…Minutes later , Jamie says, “Here´s another one”… Yet a few more minutes later… “Is this a crab!?”… I reply, “Oh yes, we have those too!” (River crab…oddly, I´ve never seen them in the river…only under my house!)

***

woolly opossum... no really.

One evening as I went to the back porch to brush my teeth I noticed something crawling on the back railing….actually it was a long tail that first caught my eye, wrapping around the banister…could this be the moment I´ve been truly waiting for…to see a cute spider monkey up close and personal?… No…it´s a…well…what is it? At that point in time, my thought of monkey quickly vanishes as the critter looks at me as if to say… “Oops! You´re not supposed to be here!” …and of course, I immediately return that thought… Somewhat casually, I say, “Alan, there is some weird animal crawling into the house, HURRY!”… We scurry for the broom and Alan manages to send the critter over the side railing and into the dark night with a loud “SPLAT!”… We learned the next morning from a neighbor that our critter is  what they call a fox…really like a cross between a possum and a ferret. It was a good size, roughly 2 feet long. We also later learned that they can usually put up a good fight and have claws!

***

Today as I am writing this, I was on the front porch and went to shut our new front door (Thank you Mr. Allen Bunch!), and I was startled to see something as big as the palm of my hand staring at me…It looked like a crawfish….what on earth? My heart was racing…When Alan returned from work he discovered it to be a species of grasshopper….a giant!

Needless to say, for Christmas, I am asking for screens!

What is that hideous thing!!? Oh. That´s dad.