Reptiles, rodents and bugs...oh my!

Living in a tropical island is nice. We often have parties at the Dock of the Bay, we gather at one of our beautiful beaches and collect sea glass, we even get together in our back yard for BBQs and a few games of ping-pong with the neighbors. All without little regard to the time of year. It really doesn't matter.

But most people and travel agencies, never comment about what comes with the heat, humidity, and sunsets.

At the beach we have our buddies, the iguanas. I haven't been to a beach where I haven't been visited by at least one iguana. At first it was kind of scary. It is clear to me why there are signs everywhere telling us to not feed the iguanas. If you feed them, they will come. Nothing that a little noise and a splash of water can't fix. However, the iguanas don't go away, they just hide or go to higher grounds and wait for you to leave so they can go scavenge the area for food.

The Banana Rats. They are Guantanamo's pet rat and they are everywhere. I have never seen one in person or alive but apparently they come out at night looking for food and anything else they can sink their teeth into. In some areas people are required to have their vehicles suited with a wire mesh on the bottom to keep the critters from chewing on anything rubber. They are sort of cute, although, anything with the name rat creeps me out.

There are snakes - have not seen one and I'm perfectly OK with that. That's why I hired someone to give my yard an "up-do" so that I didn't have to run into the snakes he found living in the bushes.

Finally, the most annoying of all. The mosquitoes and no-see-ums. They are on a schedule, though so just figure that out and carry your GiTMO Perfume (aka bug repellant) and you're good. Also the cool night air (75-80 degrees with wind) helps keep them off your skin. Before 8 am and between the hours of 6 and 8 pm is when they are most active.

So you see, there are down sides to the whole tropical island living thing. When it's hot, it's hot and when it's not... well, it's still hot!!

It helps to learn about them, their habitat, their routine and how to repel the most annoying ones. Leave the iguana's alone and don't feed them; don't leave food or trash out for the rats; hire someone to clean the yard once in a while - let them deal with the snakes and like I said before, GiTMO Perfume and good timing helps us enjoy the outdoors.

The grass appears greener on the other side, in reality, we are lucky to have any grass around here and what we have is most definitely not a very appealing shade of green!

That's all for now, until next time!

Terie

Iguana photo is mine. The Banana Rat is courtesy of Danaham's Cuba.