Animals Which Live in Our House or Sam’s Ark

Some people have expressed an interest in the fauna that coexists in our immediate vicinity, so here is the current lowdown. I suspect this may change a bit as the rainy season progresses....

Gheckos: Instead of TV, when we’re fed up with the interminable Proust of an evening, we’ll lie back in our hammocks and watch the gheckos hunting on the ceiling. Its pretty exciting stuff. Watch as they chase flies! Gasp as they capture moths twice their size! Turn a blind eye as they momentarily mate in a slightly bored fashion! Leap out of your skin when the suction pads on their feet don’t do the job and they land on the floor looking dazed after a 20ft drop!

Bats: We never see these, but have the early morning squeaks and rustles plus the ample droppings to prove they are there.

Really big flying Cockroaches: Less scary now than when we first got here, they seem to keep a low profile, so we only see them now by accident. Like opening a drawer that hadn’t been used in a month, to find 3 frantically scurrying away from the light.

Mosquitoes: I (Becs) am the unfortunate foil here. If I am in the room, Sam is never bitten. Its so unfair. They love me. Some days I get so fed up with the constant biting I just get back under the net for some peace.
A recent gift has been an electrified tennis racquet which works brilliantly at killing them. Mosquito tennis – they light up like tiny indoor fireworks.

Ants: These come in waves. When we first got here it was tiny ones – small enough to get into all our food including jars of peanut butter. Now some really big ones have arrived.

Cats: We have adopted/been adopted by (not sure which) a couple of skinny, manky but very sweet cats. They seem to have seen off the rats.

Chickens: More a garden thing – livestock of all kinds wanders around the village all the time, and some afternoons they come and hang out in our yard. No eggs yet unfortunately.

Hummingbirds: These don’t come in but seem to find a great supply of ants (see above) climbing up the stilts to our house. Occasionally one will come and feed for a few minutes up and down the concrete columns. Like a cross between a bird and an insect, we haven’t been quick enough to photograph one yet.

Songbirds: The Guyanese capture these as pets and have competitions with them – betting on whose bird will sing first. We don’t have a captive one but, as our house is of the traditional design, on stilts with slatted windows, occasionally of a morning, one will pop in, hop around, and pop out again. Beautiful.

Cows: They come to eat the grass now and then. They’re ok but they leave a lot of flies behind. We sometimes confuse them by mooing at them from inside the house.

Lizards: Outside we have a couple of big one which chase each other round the yard. Inside I found a very small one hiding behind a broom today, about 3cm long.

Giant moths and butterflies: These blunder into the house now and then, and seem to go into shock quite quickly unless they happen to find a way out again.