It has been hotter and we have had rain at some time almost every day for months. First it was the swarms of termites. It was a constant battle. Each morning I would wake up to find the floor littered with tiny wings. What that means is that the varmint has crawled away to find wood. Now the older homes are all brick or concrete and all windows and outside doors are metal, so they go for the furniture. They are so invasive that they invade live trees. There was a large tree in the parking area at my old apartment that collapsed on a tenant's car one night. When I went out to inspect it you could see that the trunk was totally riddled with termites (and the tree still had green leaves !). The termites really love my equipauli furniture (pig skin over crude wood frames). At the hardware store I bought a huge bottle of a foul smelling turpentine like stuff. You apply it with a paint brush and it soaks into the wood. It does work, but is a messy laborious task. For some reason after a the first few weeks of rain the termite stopped swarming (doesn't mean they aren't chewing on some of my furniture however). The geckos that crawl all over my walls and ceiling do help somewhat (they love to eat termites) but the problem is they also poop everywhere.
The flies this year have been very pesky and are constantly landing on you. Even though I shower twice a day, your skin is still constantly covered with perspiration. The ants have caused me some concern. At first they made homes in my potted plants. I did find a very toxic white stuff at the local nursery that is pretty effective, but they have moved to the floors. I clean my own house, mopping the floors and trust me, there isn't a crumb anywhere. We have three sizes of ants. We have the regular ones, but also tiny ants that are almost microscopic. Unless you catch them on something white they are almost invisible. Also new this year are the huge red aunts. I really hate those. Oddly enough we don't seem to have much of a problem with cockroaches (which you would think we would). I have always scattered about those "roach motel" from Raid and in three years I think I have seen maybe 5 or 6 dead ones.
Nothing has caused me more stress than the mosquitoes. This year they are eating me alive, mostly around the ankles (more blood down there). The City (or some municipality) sends people though the neighborhoods with bags of little white granules. They will deposit them anywhere you have any standing water (I have 24 pots and all have saucers). But you have to be home when they pass. They were at my first two apartments, but so far this year, I have missed them. The stores sell all kinds of products for mosquitoes and I have tried all of them. There are the plug-ins, sprays, lotions and I even tried a home remedy. You cut a lime in half and then stick cloves in it. The most effective seems to be the smoke bombs. It is a swirl of green stuff that you place on a little holder and lite it. The downside is that it stinks and your home constantly smells like something burning (no I do not smoke inside my home). One reason I really do not know how effective any of these things are is because you don't know when or where you are being bitten. The mosquitoes here are tiny (maybe a little larger than a gnat). They also make no sound. There is no "Bzzzz" to tell you that one is about to suck your blood.
Besides the usual pests (if you can all any of them usual) we have some really strange things. You have already seen that spider that was as large as my hand, but take a look at this odd caterpillar. I check all my plants constantly for any problems and found that something was eating my palm trees (I have six of them) First I found a huge green grass hoppers that could strip and entire frond in one night. By hosing the plants and them stepping on the bastards I got rid of them. But leaves continued to be eaten. I finally found this odd bug. I tried to pull it off and was badly stung by it. At first I thought it bit me, but after spraying the pest until it dropped onto the tile, I discovered that it had horns and its whole body was covered with needle like barbs (I guess no bird would dare try to eat it). I have so far found five of them all on one palm tree. You look for little dropping then check the underside of the leaf above.
My holyconia flowers are attracting more wasps than ants. Now some wasp (or I am assuming it is a wasp) have decided to make nests in my stair case. I have knocked down at least 10 mud nests. One night on my way to bed I had just turned off the lights when I saw what looked like jewels on my floor. As I moved toward it, the jewels moved ! I turned the lights back on and found a beetle like bug. Within a few seconds he closed his brilliant neon like night vision eyes and all that was left was an ugly brown bug. I stepped on it. Now we do also have some very colorful butterflies, but one of them produced those horrible caterpillars. Yes, I know that some of you are reading this with your mouths hanging open. What can I say ? Not all paradises are perfect !
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