Critter update

Is this a mouse?  I chased this guy around the shower one evening.  His bush tail is the only clue that he is NOT a mouse, but a pygmy squirrel!  Maybe he got in during the solar power system update, or maybe we just need to critter-proof our house a bit more.  He is pretty small....





 But not as small as the critters who made a mess on my desk!!  This "dust" filtered down from the ceiling, until Mike took pity on me and tacked up a strip of wood to cover the joining between the ceiling boards.  This seems to have at least contained the "dust" for now.

The battlefield - the dead and dying....

Then there are the weevils...!  Not content to stay in the flour, they can be found in most of the packaged starches in our storeroom.  I was trying to make stroganoff one day and realized that it was going to be a lot more work than I had figured on....

 But it was worth it.  Finally we were able to enjoy the cooked noodles with the delicious stroganoff sauce.

Then there are the bigger surprises, like this cricket-type critter with super long antennae.  It might be a "camel cricket" - it lives usually in dark surroundings (nocturnal) so moves around a lot by touch, using those long antennae!


Kenneth is a real lover of critters; he was thrilled to have a regular lizard in his room, and worked hard to catch it.  We usually let the little geckos stay hidden in our house to catch insects at night, but regular lizards are too bold and large for our liking.  Kenneth was called on to catch the other lizard in the house - he likes to feel their skin (when you move your finger the wrong way against it, it catches in little spikes) before releasing them outside.