Bangladesh Critters

Bangladesh is a country of many new experiences for us.  One of these experience is the vast variety of unique critters. Even the country's name gives a hint to this as in the Bangla Language the word "Bang" is for from the word Frog and "desh" is country. So basically Bangladesh could be crudely translated to "Frog Country" or "The Country of Frogs". And now that we are started into the rainy season I see why. This place is hopping and humming with these guys. Frogs are just a start though to what we come across on a daily basis. Most encounters I believe are harmless, but occasionally I would be out working on the site and we come across a bug that the workers quickly take a brick and kill as they say else it may try to kill you. Or if I'm walking across a field at night and a guard would come running out with his flashlight to make sure I don't walk into a poisonous snake. Although the most harmless bugs are often the most annoying such as Cockroaches, Mosquitoes and Ants (when I say harmless I guess they really are not that harmless as we could contract Malaria from the mosquitoes, Cockroaches are carriers lots of bacteria and the ants can have a wicked bite). Thankfully we have a home that is well screened so with regular work we can keep the incidents of bugs comparatively low within our house.

(Every night we have one or two frogs in our front porch eating the hundreds of bugs that collect around the light - this is a fat one)

(A big spider in the shower - I believe it is a wolf spider with an egg sack. We typically leave most spiders so they can eat the cockroaches and mosquitoes)

(another large spider that is always hanging out by the pool)

(Some really large beetles around.  They really make a loud noise when they hit the windows at night.)

(Some type of scorpion? out on our front porch)

(A small snake out on the front porch - only about a foot long)

(stick bug? on a wall in our house.)

(Another large random spider on our porch) 

(We have a few families of Tik-Tikies (geckos) that roam our house keeping the bug population down. Here is a baby that is missing most of his tail. Most are roughly 5 inches long. They are fairly amazing in that they can move along basically every surface including across the ceiling)

(Holly's arch nemesis.... the cockroach... 

ever since a few tried to crawl into bed with her... successfully)

(Large snails - about the size of my fist)

Termites are another issue here. One evening we were having a nap for only 15 minutes then when we turned the light on there were hundreds of termites crawling all over our bedroom floor. Needless to say we go through a steady supply of insect sprays.

Jon