The Critters of Haiti

One of the things our kids enjoyed most about their time in Haiti in July was the wildlife!  I thought I'd put together some of the photos involving snakes, lizards, frogs and tarantulas:

We found this tree frog on our first night out hunting for tarantulas.  Ida held the frog in hand until the frog relieved itself on Ida's palm!

After we discovered where the tarantulas hang out at night, it wasn't enough to just LOOK at them ... we were determined to CATCH one!  Here the kids are ready and equipped to bag a tarantula.  It would take us over a week to learn how to actually do it, though...

Bud and Jane had a dog named Lettie - a good temporary replacement for Oreo, as far as our kids were concerned.

A spider Melissa discovered in the boys' room.  It raised a scream out of her and I had to send it to spider heaven.



Dave's granddaughter found a hermit crab in their garden one morning and brought it by our house, knowing that our kids would be interested.  It was the biggest hermit crab I'd ever seen.



You can't walk out your front door without seeing four or five lizards scampering away.  They are hard to catch, but we managed now and then.

Seemed to me that no two of these lizards were colored exactly the same.  This one is beautiful, isn't it?

Jane took us to visit one of the other Cowman School teachers.  LilyBeth has an incredible place up the mountainside.  The Princess got to see the chickens and ducks in the pen - which she enjoyed, since she was in the habit of announcing each and every chicken we saw along the road or on the compound during the entire trip.

Lilybeth's husband also kept turtles - apparently these sorts of turtles are being hunted to near extinction in Haiti.

Dats caught this lizard, then the lizard wiggled loose and caught Dats!  This photo doesn't really do justice to the panic Dats felt at having a lizard fight back...

Why don't you pick on somebody your own size?!

This is the tree stump where we discovered our first tarantula ...

And he was a big one!  I was impressed that Melissa was willing to tag along and hold the flashlight for our tarantula hunts.  I've got some fun video that I'd love to post if I can find the time!

It turns out that you catch a tarantula by "fishing" for it.  We took a stick and tied some dental floss to it.  Then we caught a good-sized moth and tied it to the other end of the floss.  A tarantula can't resist a bug dangling in fornt of its eyes and will jump and latch onto the bug.  We put ours in a clear plastic bag so the kids could get a close look.

We set him free.  Why is it that I have no problem squashing the little garden variety spiders you find around your house, but I don't think I could ever bring myself to kill one of these beasts?

The only critter missing here is the snake that Dats caught one day after lunch.  We have video of that - from a distance - since Melissa held the camcorder.  The Haitians really don't seem to like snakes one bit...