let's be social!
You might have already read about our very exciting snail races, but there are more than just snails in Tonj! One of the fun things about being married to Blaise is that he notices everything, no matter how small. He knows SO MUCH about bugs and animals it’s unreal! So often, he would leave our room to take one last bathroom break before bed, but he would be gone forever. When he finally came back, he would have either a real live bug in his hands or a picture of something he had seen while he was out.
So here are a few of things we’ve encountered over the past month (some of them are iPhone pictures at night, so the quality isn’t so great).
The first discovery was this AWESOME hedgehog. This was only the first hedgehog…the second one ended up in our bedroom with Blaise pleading for us to keep it. We didn’t.
As the rains came, these HUGE millipedes came out. Blaise assures me that they are harmless, just big. Some of them are at least 8 inches long!
I don’t know what this beetle is, but this was one of the pictures Blaise came back with…
This scorpion is MUCH scarier looking than the ones we encountered in Nasir. The Nasir scorpions are red and really small, easy to step on. This guy was about 5 or 6 inches long and looked FIERCE! He’s currently living under our porch…
This is a rhinoceros beetle. It’s big and actually pretty cool! Blaise brought this into our bedroom on a stick so he could show me!
These lizards are EVERYWHERE! They are fairly large compared to the small skinks and geckos, and this one is probably 8 or 9 inches long. They are orange at the head and tail, but a bluish-purple around their body. Pretty cool!
I have no idea what kind of lizard this is (I’m sure Blaise told me). But it’s even bigger than the orange/purple ones!
This is just a cool picture! Blaise captured a shot of a bug mid-flight. Love it!
So, we have a serious mouse problem in Tonj. The mice are a size between cute mice and rats, and they have prehensile tails (meaning they wrap their tails around things to hang on). The whole team (IDAT and us) sat one night watching a BIG mouse catch flying termites in the dining hall. Anyway, Blaise found this little blind mouse, brought it to our room, and pleaded with me to keep it. Ummm, no thanks! He didn’t even kill it (I would have), but instead set it somewhere outside. He was cute, but not cute enough to keep as a pet!
Blaise caught this bird in the bathroom. Before he turned it loose, we had to get a picture. There are so many different birds in Tonj…this one makes a really pretty sound!
This is a civet, a small, wild, African cat. This little guy lives in our ceiling and we hear it running around at night (they’re nocturnal). For some reason, he came out on Easter morning and we were finally able to get a decent picture of him!
And the wildest of all the wildlife…Thunder! Haha, we LOVE this big, goofy German Shepherd. He hangs out in our room most of the time, and when we shut him out of our room, he can sometimes be found like this, trying to keep cool. Goof ball!
I’m sure we’ll have more to show you the longer we’re there. My husband is determined to get a picture or video of the trapdoor spider in action, and some day I’ll take a picture of the nasty crab wall spider before I kill it. 🙂
