Unwanted Visitors

I was gone from home for about 4 days. When I came home I climbed up my ladder, which is a log with notches cut in it. Shortly after Rubén stopped by to visit. As he was climbing my ladder all of a sudden he stopped, jumped down to the ground, and started running away from the house yelling something in Emberá. Surprised and confused, I asked him what happened. He said, “There’s a hornets’ nest on your ladder! Those things really sting hard…” Sure enough, I looked and they had started a huge nest on the underside of the log where I couldn’t see. I felt bad for being so unwelcoming to visitors, seeing how people couldn’t even get into my house without getting stung by hornets. I thought maybe I could light it on fire and burn them out, but then I remembered that my roof is made of dry, very flammable leaves – not worth the risk. Rubén had the idea to use boiling water kill them. So I poured a pot of boiling water on the nest, and killed about half of the hornets. The other half were not too happy about that. Now my only exit from the house, which is 8 feet above the ground, was blocked by a raging swarm of angry hornets. Thinking maybe they would calm down and go away, I decided to get out of the house. I climbed out one of the windows away from the ladder to try and reach a floor joist that stuck out from the side of the house and swing down. As soon as I reached it and found my balance on this plank, I came face to face with a nest of large orange and yellow wasps. They had also made themselves at home, but in the roof instead.

Living in my house is a lot like living outside. Basically any living creature smaller than a Panamanian child can and will get into my house at any time: bats, rats, cockroaches, frogs, ants, lizards, scorpions, tarantulas, caterpillars, and of course mosquitoes and sand flies. While having a roof made of leaves is great for keeping the house cool, it has also developed its own ecosystem in the spaces between leaves.

When ants attack...

A few days ago I had an infestation of ants. And when I say infestation, I mean it was serious. I got out of bed early in the morning while it was still dark, and felt things crawling all over my feet. Then those things started biting. It was a terrible way to wake up. So I hopped across the floor to get my flashlight and discovered that the floor was moving. The entire house was covered in ants! They were everywhere - the floor, the walls, the shelves, the stove. So I ran out to the porch and jumped into my hammock, the only safe place. Apparently these giant swarms of ants come through and just eat everything in their path. At least they got rid of all the cockroaches and spiders and left after a few hours.

Keeping my food sealed in plastic containers and buckets only keeps the pests at bay to a point. The good news is that the old food chain works to my advantage, and some of the critters will eat the others. The bats eat the mosquitoes, the ants eat the cockroaches, the lizards eat the ants, and well nothing eats the rats. Until now…

Classic Calvin and Hobbes

The most recent addition to the house is my new pest exterminator. He is also known as a kitten. My neighbor’s cat had three of them and I was offered one. I figured it was for the best, since the cat needed a home I needed some help with the rodents. So now I share the bachelor pad with Hobbes. He is named for the stuffed tiger of my favorite comic strip. I guess our relationship not quite the same as Calvin and Hobbes, maybe not as entertaining. But I’m hoping to raise a trained killer and have a few less creatures visiting the house. 

Hobbes, my pest exterminator in training