8 March 2006
Intimate encounters
Posted by Merel, GFRS volunteer
"Look there, Klaas!" He slowly comes closer with his binoculars, focusing on the direction I’m pointing in. I just happened to look up among the trees next to me, and there it was...
What a beautiful animal!
"It's a dove," he says. But this is not your ordinary black and white spotted garden dove. This is a dove harbouring an ambition to win the next Miss Dove elections. It has a shining yellow belly, a purple breast and a blue back. Imagine having a few hundreds of those in your local main square. They would surely brighten up the town a whole lot!
Meanwhile, there is something creeping up my leg. I role up my pants and find my first bloodsucker.
"Bloodsuckers are cool," according to Curtis. In fact, they don’t hurt, they go away on their own initiative and they don’t transmit any diseases. Even so, Flo attempts to scare me by saying that sometimes they creep under the corner of your eye! To get them out you put a warm leaf on your eyelid and have a lot of faith. Fortunately, this type of invasion doesn’t seem to happen very often.
What does happen? You get an intimate visit from one of the famous mungis: very small red mites. They prefer the warmer parts of your body. Once they get there, they dig their way under your skin and you start itching. There is no escaping them and I have quite a collection already. Thankfully, once you’ve tamed them, they are okay guests - according to Curtis, anyway.
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://weblog.greenpeace.org/cgi-bin/mv/mt-tb.cgi/1281
Comments
What an experience! That must be quite nice. Where is that? the Amazon? I personally am afraid of the forest because all of the unkown animals there are, but must be fun, an adventure. I like it. Keep up doing that.
Posted by: Carlos Agelvis at March 13, 2006 2:08 AM
