Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Animal Planet Weekend

We had a 3-day weekend this weekend and went to stay at a village house with our friends, Dale and Annick. We'll tell you more specifically about some of the events of the weekend, but first, let me tell you about our animal adventures over the three days.

Our first encounter with animals came in the form of flies. It is that time of year here in Cyprus and you mostly get used to them, but these ones were especially pesky. Cisco got a great close-up of one on a piece of our melon. Looks like something out of a sci-fi movie, huh?

Our next animal encounter was with the lizards. They were everywhere! They are real cute and very fast. It was hard to get a picture at all, so this one's not too great.


On our second day in the village house, we went for a drive around the country-side. Dale took us to the infamous goat village. There are a lot of abandon houses, a few still with owners in them, but most filled with goats. We happened to come at the goat crossing time. The goats you see here are only a fraction of the goats in the village.


Also on our second day, we went to Avakas Gorge. On the way, there was a restaurant with a bunch of pigs outside. There were two BIG mommas, one with a couple of older babies, and one with about 10 newbies. They were SUPER cute and reminded us of Babe or Wilbur from Charlotte's Web. In this photo, some of the babies are getting a little confused about who their momma is. I wanted to take the little pink one (in the top left corner of the pic) home with me...Cisco said no.

On our last day in the village house (and thankfully it was our last day) we woke up to do some dishes and squeeze some orange juice (the village house was in the middle of an orange grove). Cisco went to the sink and jumped about 5 feet back. This is what we found in the sink. A real, live tarantula! Its body was about the size of my thumb and its legs were big and hairy. Though we were both freaked out, I saved the day and caught it, then released it into the orange grove. I still have goose-bumps thinking about it.

Finally, shortly after the tarantula incident, we noticed something unusual in the pool. There was a little mousy swimming across, holding his little head out of the water, and paddling his little legs as fast as he could.

Don't you worry...we saved said little mousy and he was just fine, if a bit water-logged. Oh, the Walker adventures never end!

1 comment:

Melissa said...

OK, my heart is POUNDING......that tarantula is absolutely frightening! OMG! I would have been paralyzed with fear. I commend you in being able to....gulp.....catch it. M