It Takes Two to Tango

Last night's sky over Mt. Cacharumba.
People say a storm is coming our way, one that is currently moving toward Baja. I only hope it gets here soon and drops the temperature a little........there is a nice breeze today.

Wow, I just made some blue corn tortilla chips, boy, are they good.

I use blue corn flour and water to make the dough. I don't have a tortilla press so I flatten out a small ball inside a plastic baggie, peel the tortilla off the bag, take the tortilla out, cut it in pie shapes with a pizza cutter and fry them. There is nothing better than a blue corn totopo, sprinkled with a little salt and served with a mix of cream cheese, avocado and red chiles...very good stuff.

Unless you happen to be a cat and prefer other types of food. Like the tasty critter food Cookies has in the photo below.........

This lizard is only a sampling of the creatures that suddenly are traveling through our yard on their little ways, I hope, to someone else's yard.

Umbierto speared three giant scorpions yesterday. Two were black, but the biggest one, which he found in the stack of ladrillos that I have been carting to the asadero, was white. Those, according to the mexicans here, are the BAD ones.

There is a 24 hour hospital in Alamos, so I'm trying not to worry very much about it, they're just little wingless bug things, right?I think the hospital gives you a painfull anti venom shot.

Bill and I have discussed it, maybe it's a seasonal thing, you know, after the rains, some crawly things just come around for awhile to see what's going on...who's dating who..the latest fashion..whatdya do last Saturday night...

but, you would think it's raining tarantulas now around this place. Everytime we turn around, there is a hairy pin cushion with legs, coming up to the Hilton Garden Room.

We were watching a movie the other night (our kids reminded us we CAN watch dvd's on the laptop) and suddenly a pin cushion came walking across the floor..... he stopped and appeared to be looking around, maybe for a bed for the night, I don't know.

I said to Bill.....oh, darn it, look at that tarantula, could you please get it, dear...

(well, that is sort of what I said, but just in case there are any younger people following the blog...)

Bill calmly stopped the movie and got the broom and swept the tarantula off the floor and into the yard. And that is the truth.

I was not pleased.

You CANNOT just sweep that sort of thing off and into the yard!...it knows where it wants to go and it's just going to come right back up here....you HAVE to kill it....

So, Bill started the movie again and told me that I can be in charge of all the tarantulas that from here on out make themselves visible to us.

But, good grief, if you have the chance to kill a tarantula, you have to do it. He killed a baby scorpion yesterday, for Pete's Sake, you HAVE to kill a tarantula.

I would certainly kill it.

When we lived in the northwest, I would rarely kill a spider. In fact, I would pick it up in a paper towel and then walk out the door and throw it in the yard. KD is the same way. She doesn't like to hurt a spider.

Ian, on the other hand, is scared to death of even baby spiders. I have seen him physically jump fly out of a Mexican motel once when we requested to see the room. He said the spider in there was as big as a pie pan.

So, I really hate to sound as if I am picking on tarantulas, or Bill for that matter, but when was the last time you looked down because your husband said...don't move....to see a huge hairy pin cushion walking across YOUR shoe???

I bet NEVER!!!

So, if that should happen to you, I promise you will not ever want it to happen again, so you pick up a shovel, or if you don't happen to just have a shovel laying around your living room like I do.....you grab anything, the fireplace poker, the broom, rip down the curtain rod if you must and whack!.......you cut that pin cushion right in two....which is exactly what I did this morning and I don't have any regrets about it.

I just don't think Bill understands. If one comes, they ALL come. It's like they are having parties in our yard. And it takes two to tango.

Surely you have seen the National Geographic photos of the fighting scorpions? and they call that dancing.....you don't know what might happen if their parties get out of control. And, god forbid, the tangoing tarantulas try and crash a scorpion salsa party..can you imagine the amount of noise that could produce....eight wingless mariachi musicians playing till all hours of the night..and they expect me to clean up after them???

I can barely walk around the yard in the evening without thinking every little tickle or brush against my leg is a...something.

When the cats heads pop straight up at night, so does mine....is there something in the room? is there something crawling across the sheets? what are cookies and ashes looking at?

So, it is only my hope that these creatures who seem to have a new found love for our yard will soon find the assortment of party foods better next door...