OUR GAL IN NICARAGUA   Nicaragua ain't for no sissies.  even i had quite the time of it last night.  we'll start a couple of nights ago to me waking up at about 5:20 am to a noise in the kitchen.  i quickly decided it was much too noisy to be a burglar and figured out that it was a mouse in some plastic bags in the kitchen.  as i stepped out of the bedroom to scope out the situation, i turned on the light as the mouse launched itself out of the bags hanging on the wall and PLOPPED!  on the floor and went scurrying.  then as i prepared to turn around and go to bed, i realized that there was a very organized line of a good 100 ants racing across my back door in the kitchen to a small hole in my wooden wall that i hadn't thought too much of before.

now ants in nicaragua are not just ants.  nicaraguans have names for different types of ants like the eskimos have for different types of snow.  These were of the "sapopo" variety, which are at least twice the size of your average nebraska ant (i would say about  1/2 to 3/4 inch long), and are characterized by a "burnt sienna" color (now don't you wish you'd bought the 100 pack of crayolas?), a huge ball like brown colored head, and a hell of a bite.  i also found out today that they eat clothes.

So last night i decided to take care of the situation...i took my can of "Bay-Gon" (raid) and sprayed it into their main entry hole, and a previously identified areterial hole.  immediately ants starting throwing their bodies out of this hole.  ant after ant after ant is coming out of this wall, i can hear their bodies as they hit the table and floor below and scurry around all poisoned.  i try sticking around to see how this plays out, but so many are falling out of that hole they are covering the kitchen floor and scurrying to my bedroom, the dining area, the living room (all tiled)...finally i go into the living room as i am getting way to freaked out by all of these frantic potentially biting ants.  i took advantage to call this wells-fargo lady on the phone in the states.  as we were talking, i saw this scurrying on the floor.  it is a cockroach.  not one of those "little" cockroaches that some of you saw pictures of while i was back, but i am talking about one of those three to four inch long, 1 1/2 inch wide suckers.  i dropped the phone while i stomped him and mischieviously told the lady "sorry, i had to kill something".  she whispered "oh my gosh"-the only real human reaction i got out of her automated demeanor.  it was a precious moment for me.

these cockroaches don't die if you squish their head, however, i forgot.  you have to pretty much separate their entire abdomen from their head.  so i looked up to see it get up and scurry across the floor. i followed it behind a chest and looked behind it-rustling out a nice little gecko that scared me as it sped away on its four fast little webbed feet.  finally getting the cockroach, finding another, squishing that one...dodging convulsing ants all over the floor, worrying that in their suffering they would blindly latch onto my long lounging pants and crawl up my legs...i was getting paranoid.  then i go into the kitchen and but if i didn't see run away the damn mouse.  i go back up to the front of the living room and put up my feet on the rocker and start reading.  then i feel a presence.  i looked up, my eyes swinging to the front door that i keep open.  there, immediately frozen, was this cat with huge reflective eyes and coiling muscles, readying to leap away.  i made some noise and it took off through my front gate, and more or less brought my night to a close.

i had thought that i'd kill those ants really quick and then go do some yoga; i put that off for last night, wracked with guilt for a mass murder, permanent goose-bumps, and paranoia of ants crawling in my pants.

                 HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!
ls.
p.s. mother, this cannot be used against me as reasoning for not coming to visit me.  you can stay in a hotel.  pops, i think that you would rather enjoy it here.