Creatures...

Living in the tropics exposes one to a wide range of creatures. I can’t say I have seen many exciting creatures here in Sierra Leone but I have definitely seen my share of bugs. Just the other day I had an ant invasion in my bathroom. I left my room for about an hour, came back, went into my bathroom and was faced with hundreds of ants on my bathroom floor. There were so many of them in so little time it was scary! And disgusting. Where did they come from??? Plus some of them were moving, some weren’t. Were they slowly dying or were they just at the beginning of their life cycle and hatching???!?!!! I don’t even want to know.

Besides ants we have many other small but frequent visitors. The termites shed their wings everywhere, colored and see-through lizards scale the walls, an occasional cockroach wanders across the floor, fairly big spiders seem to make their way into my room, huge snails crawl along the ground pretty much waiting to be stepped on, praying mantises hop around. Plenty of wildlife here!

And not to forget the bigger creatures…dogs in the street that bark all night, our cat constantly begging for attention, chimpanzees that manage to escape from the chimp reserve. And snakes- actually I have only seen one live snake and two dead snakes. Both freak me out. And last but not least mice. There’s still a mouse hiding in my consultation room somewhere. I guess as longs as it stays out of sight I’ll let it stay!

Not quite your East African wild life but still interesting enough to capture some of the images on camera.