Frogs, lizards and bugs, O My!

The Baha’i volunteer house is a row townhouse, very close to the school. It has a small, gated front yard and an enclosed back porch. As is typical here, there is a sink in the back porch for washing dishes, a big tub for washing clothes, and a clothesline. We don’t have air-conditioning, but there are fans upstairs and downstairs. We also don’t have a washing machine, so we will be washing our clothes in the tub outside. The house is pretty big, and it is great to be able to put the kids to bed upstairs and enjoy a cup of tea downstairs. Also, the kids are enjoying the space and being free to run around and play upstairs. We gave the whole place a good sweeping and mopping yesterday, and we’re good to go. The Baha’i friends here had made the beds and put some basic food items in the kitchen for us, which was very nice.


We are meeting some of the local “wildlife” too: there are lizards, crickets, frogs, goats, dogs, buffalo, etc. We saw some goats being chased up the street by a couple of dogs earlier today. Yasmin saw a baby lizard on the floor in the kids’ room yesterday, just walking around. She tried to give it a toy to climb, but it ran away!

We also found a frog in the sink outside when I went out to do the dishes! Amid shrieking and laughter, we tried to shoo it away and make it go out, over the half wall, but it kept jumping around and we finally let it stay on the ground, but kept an eye on him.

A different frog was sitting on the washed pot this morning! We couldn’t see inside the pot, so we weren’t sure if there was another one lying in wait there. The kids looked into the pot through the kitchen window and said there was nothing in it. So we brought out the big pail and held it under the pot to catch the frog just in case it jumped down. It stayed right on the side of the pot as we lifted the pot and brought it close to the concrete half-wall and wire fence above it, to make him go outside. It would not go out though, and we were banging on the pot and shrieking and laughing at the same time. It just hopped on top of the half wall and we tried to poke it with a stick to make it go outside. By this point, he was a little upset and started puffing himself up. So we let him be for a while, but kept checking on him from the window. After a while he jumped on the clothesline, and was getting ready to jump back into the sink, so I tried to knock him to the fence again. He managed to land on the ground and went in the corner. Later on, we found him on the side of the big pail and we lifted the pail and banged on it to get him to jump on the fence. After a bit of harassing, we managed to make him go outside. Phew! We haven’t seen him again, but we are watching our backs!! We did not have an issue with frogs in Bangkok because we were on the 6th floor. Here, we are on the ground floor, so they have better access to us.

Lizards are actually our friends because they eat the bugs, so we leave them alone. It is a little eerie though to have one near the ceiling in the shower! We always turn on the lights, and look around to make sure the coast is clear on before entering the rooms. You never know if a little creature is going to land on you from above! The excitement never ends!

NM