The rivers are full of crocodile nasties
And He who made kittens put snakes in the grass.
He's a lover of life, but a player of pawns ---
Yes, the King of the sunset lies waiting for dawn
To light up His jungle, as play is resumed.
The monkeys seem willing to strike up the tune.

Jethro Tull - Bungle in the Jungle

But, but..., but..... I LIKE most snakes (even dated a few), Beasties that they are. The Fer de Lance is more like a War Child, Stormbringer, portender of doom.

Nor snake nor slowworm draweth nigh her...

Ogden Nash

But I, like the Fairies, wear boots and try to protect myself. Thigh high leather hiking boots, a bit of a pain in the neck, but a real fashion statement.

Yeah, fairies wear boots and you gotta believe me
Yeah I saw it, I saw it, I tell you no lies
Yeah Fairies wear boots and you gotta believe me
I saw it, I saw it with my own two eyes

Black Sabbath--Fairies Wear Boots

And lived to tell it.

Hijack? Hijack? I've hijacked my own thread. Nothing more fun to do than THAT! (ok, actually I can think of several things that are much more fun to do, but you know what I mean)

No!!! I really DO want to go to Australia sometime.

Actually, snakes fascinate me. And I love salt water fishies and the like, having had a salt water aquarium for quite some time. Don't like jellyfish or man-o-war, however. A lot of snakes in Australia don't envenom on the first bite. Still, I wouldn't want to get bitten in the first place. Why tempt fate?

Snakes in Australia are being studied by scientists to see if the effect of their venom can be of benefit to humans. For example, they've found that snake venom targets only certain cells, so its action would be beneficial to killing cancer cells. They want to find out the action so that they can duplicate the substance artificially.

Have you ever seen the movie Duma? It's pretty cool. You learn a bit about cheetahs and their habitat. Rabbit Proof Fence was really good also.

my favorite tidbit is about the vampire bats found here in Belize.

scientists isolated an anticoagulant from vampire bats, called Draculin, and it's being used for medical purposes now, to thin blood after strokes and heart attacks!

Draculin is a glycoprotein found in the saliva of vampire bats. It is composed of 411 amino acids. It functions as an anticoagulant, inhibiting coagulation factors IX (IXa) and X (Xa), and thus keeping the blood of the bitten victim from clotting while the bat is drinking.

http://www.wikimirror.com/Vampire_bat

slurp, slurp!

here's a baby boa constrictor, caught between the two screen layers of my front door:



the HOLES in the screen are from my kitty's claws, lol, she thought the snake was a new TOY!

Poor little guy! All coiled up and nowhere to go. Dang, a thing like that could spoil your whole day.

That's one persistent kitty. Sheesh... But the holes remind me of my back door screen. One of my dogs knows how to let herself out. The other, my boy dog, knows how to let them back in. He's the culprit for the holes. They both hate loud noises, like fireworks. So she let them out into the backyard and then a firework went off and he panicked and let them in after trying a couple of times to get the door open!

And I definitely see why you have two layers to your screens.

Let me ask you this: Why are the outside ones BIGGER holes than the inside ones? What is it that tries to get into your house that requires bigger holes and stronger metal?

Draculin? That's way cool. When I worked in the hospital I often worked midnights and I always wanted to go in on Halloween dressed as Dracula. I'd have to check oxygen twice a night (midnight and 0400) and could just imagine me leaning over a bed dressed as Dracula and having a patient waking up and seeing me in a black cloak with fangs on. Oh my... the heart attacks I could have caused. Still, it was a fun thought each year!

Oooh pick me!! I have always wanted to go to Belize. You seem like someone I could definitely travel with.

Me too! Besides, Brain and I live close to each other - we could travel together. Wonder if we would get kicked off the airplane.....

So, what you are saying is that you have Murphy's Law written all over your life? If something weird is going to happen to someone in a group, it will usually be you?? I'll bet you are one of THOSE people who always end up with foreign objects in their food.

If I had opened the door and saw that you'd have had to peel me off the ceiling. . . . .

Holly, of COURSE you can come. After all, you, me, and Brain have to build the treehouse and Cayo is going to outfit it with really good screens. We'll all huddle together and watch the beasties come out in the night.

Hope you have a 'chute so if/when you DO get kicked off, you'll have a nice, safe landing. Oh... hope all 3 of us have chutes cuz we'll probably be together.

Oddly enough, I AM one of those Murphy's Law/Rod Serling Twilight Zone people whose life seems totally unbelievable until you hang around with me and realize that breadties and toothpicks are another food group and a natural part of my diet. Yes, if it can happen, it'll happen to me. Beware.

Herekitty, you'd have made an interesting ceiling decoration. So, I take it you're not a fan of decoupage?

great, now I'm picturing you with fangs!

the outer heavy-gauge screen is to slow down the 6 inch wide moths, and the bats, and the gigundous flying beetles that flock in June.

the inner screen is to block the termite swarms, mosquitos, and the gnats and stuff.

the heavy wooden outer door is in the bodega, and only gets affixed during hurricane season... rest of the year, the whole kitchen is just screened walls, with a wide-overhang roof to catch the rain, and shade the room.

that pic was taken at 3 am after Morda woke us yowling in frustration: (MRRRRROOOOOOWWWWW!!)

I couldn't go back to sleep, so I did the ol' google-identification thing, trying to figure out what kind of snake it was... and learned that if we had ONE baby boa.... (*shudder*) there were likely DOZENS more in the immediate area, as the mama can birth up to 50 at once (*mega-shudder*)

we repaired the tears with duct tape... but I didn't use it all, as I wanted to have some left over for Empathy Man.