Spain's little nasties

Sometimes I miss the good old English creepy crawlies, having had some nasty confrontations with the Spanish varieties. I’m sure there are worse parts of the world in which to live, but I for one wouldn’t choose them.

Amongst the worst are the caterpillars, centipedes and spiders, whilst for pets it’s the sand flies, processional caterpillars and ticks.

My bedroom ceiling resembles a graveyard consisting of spiders, centipedes and mossies and we have now learnt, after several nasty experiences, to carefully examine every corner of our bedrooms at night before going to sleep.

Mosquitoes, despite nets on all the windows, still manage to sneak in and haunt the bedrooms at night. Just when you are dropping off to sleep you hear that awful buzzing noise around you, yet they completely disappear once you turn the lights on, only to return when the lights go off and you settle back down. Although not painful, the itching can keep you awake for hours.

Some mornings you find an array of bites which are quite obviously from different insects, some bites have two puncture wounds together which I think are from centipedes, others are swellings with one puncture, probably from spiders. Both of these are painful, as opposed to the itching of a mosquito bite.

Centipedes are not small as in the UK, and can be anything from an inch – 6”. This may not sound too large, but if you wake up and find one that size on your leg as my daughter did when she spent the night in the ‘campo’, you really would get a shock – and probably a nasty bite. Centipede bites are quite painful, a friend of mine had to have her swollen foot lanced in hospital due to the spreading venom causing so much pain. They are extremely quick – I suppose that’s expected from something with that many legs, but believe me if you’d been bitten by one, you would make real sure that you did not go to sleep in a room with one still running around.

The pine, or processional caterpillars live in cocoons in pine trees and drop down ‘en masse’, marching nose to tail in search of food. There may be hundreds at a time and their hairs are dangerous both to humans and animals. The only way to stop the procession is to burn them, as the hairs can still have an effect when the caterpillar is dead. An animal that inhales the hair, will suffer severe respiratory problems which are fatal if the antidote is not injected in time. Death is relatively quick, within about 12 hours – as we found out last year with one of our cats. Luckily, they are not around all year, mainly between the end of Jan – end March.

Ticks can cause irreversible damage to animals by disease transmission. Attempting to pull them from your pet can leave the head buried under the skin which can result in a nasty infection. Burning the body of the tick once it is blood filled (often you won’t notice them until they are full) works, but obviously this depends on whether your pet will stand for this. Luckily for us, our dog used to keep still and allow us to burn them.

The Sand fly lives in overgrown gardens and woody areas and is at its most dangerous to animals in the early hours of morning during the summer season. Disease from the Sand fly can lie dominant in dogs for years, and can be transmitted from dog to dog. The best preventative measure is to buy a special collar, especially if your dog lives outside. Sand flies rarely come indoors, and fly close to ground level.

There are apparently 13 varieties of snakes in Spain, of which only the vipers are dangerous. It is very rare to see them unless you walk in the mountains, but occasionally you will see some quite long ones slithering down a quiet road.

I have had two recent ‘episodes’ concerning rats which I haven’t encountered in the previous 4 years, although apparently rat colonies are quite prevalent in the villages. Sitting at a small Spanish bar in the port area of Calpe having a drink with a friend after a long day at the beach, we were deep in conversation when I felt movement on my shoulder. Thinking it was my salt encrusted hair blowing in the wind, I didn’t take a lot of notice until my friend leapt from her chair at the same time as a face appeared at the side of mine. The table behind us also jumped up, as did I as the rat jumped from my shoulder to the ground. When the bar owner came out to see why half his customers were standing in the street, we explained about ‘el rato’, and he laughed and said that they were living in the storeroom at the back of the next door building. A rather peculiar attitude from a guy that also sells food.

Last Monday, having been out all day, we returned home to find a big hole in the mosquito net at the kitchen window. Positive it hadn’t been there before, but convinced by the children that it had, we went to bed not giving it a second thought. Tuesday, I covered it up by using superglue and a piece of material to make sure that nothing that stings or bites flew in. Wednesday evening my daughter and I walked into the kitchen as a large rat fled from the new hole he was biting in the net. We now have to keep the kitchen window closed despite the still high temperatures whilst I decide whether I am capable of trying to poison him. Having kept pet rats in England, I’m not sure that I can.

more press and features

some of our bird-themed bags are featured in the october 2006 issue of BIRDTALK magazine! yikes! we made it into a bird magazine!! wooha! connie, the editor, has super kindly offered to mail me a copy of the magazine, since it's not found in singapore, i don't know how it looks like inside yet.. but soon! ^_^








yes, i'd like to think that we're politically correct to shop from... :p
http://fasshonaburu.blogspot.com/2006/06/politically-correct-store.html
"Fasshonaburu: Japanese for fashionable, means Fashionista in the US. A blog about fashion, shopping and the occasional tiny animal accessory."
thanks fasshonaburu for mentioning littleoddforest!

and yup, if you don't already know (???) i'm participating in this year's singapore fashion week '06
i'm still not sure how i feel about it, i don't even know why!!? maybe because it's all too much for me, one girl-adult-person to handle.. things are getting crazier as the days go by, i'm amazed i'm still "looking" alive. HA! but anyways, here's one of the first of it's press mentions...

and yes, i'll be flying home tonight, it was so hard for me to get an internet connection, but yes, now i'm starting to clear a gazillion emails.

*kisses* more soon!

Literary cottage...

I received a call from a friend saying that a client of his needed help with some minor ( very )computer work. We went to see this lady yesterday at her beautiful thatched cottage. I discovered that the cottage was previously owned by the writer William Golding http://www.william-golding.co.uk/ who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1983. They had a lovely big garden and Paul and Georgia were given a bag to pick delicous organic apples and plums from the little orchard. Tomorrow we are going to make stewed apples with cinnamon and a touch of nutmeg ( one of my favorites from home) and then of course, some apple crumble! You can just see the little orchard off to the right in the photo below ( just a portion of the pretty garden)....

Steve Irwin 1962 - 2006

I was saddened to hear of the death of Steve “The Crocodile Hunter” Irwin earlier today. He died doing something he loves and I’ll bet he wouldn’t have changed how he lived his life, even if he knew how it would end up.

Press reports are focusing on his contributions as an environmentalist; I want to point out that his contributions to Australia’s tourism are incalculable. Although I never visited his Australia Zoo near Brisbane, I always recommended it to my clients who traveled to the area. They always had a wonderful time and brought back great pictures and video that they shared with me. Those that actually got to meet Steve usually called it the highlight of their trip.

Although he won’t be there in the future, I’m sure his legend will grow and continue to inspire people to come to Australia and learn about its wildlife that he loved so much.

Once Upon a Time at the Gas Pump

An article about King’s Canyon National Park in yesterday’s New York Times got me thinking about my trip there in 2003. I took my family on a great road trip – we flew to Las Vegas, rented a car and camped while visiting four National Parks: Death Valley, Sequoia, King’s Canyon and Yosemite.

I used to have an interesting little story from King’s Canyon. Less than three years later, it’s not so interesting anymore. It was the story I called “The highest price I ever paid for gas in the United States” (once upon a time).

On September 6, 2003 I paid $2.79 per gallon at the only gas pump in King’s Canyon National Park. It was shocking at the time. Sure, I’d paid more in Europe – probably that much per liter – but this was America! Still, we didn’t mind spending the money, the scenery was beautiful and it was very remote from any other competition. We paid our money, smiled inwardly, and went on our way. Today I looked up prices from that week on the Department of Energy website. The national average was $1.61.

After we returned home, I enjoyed telling people about that experience for a while and it never failed to impress. I forgot about it until yesterday when I read that article and it made me nostalgic for the good old days: three years ago.

Memorable Meals: Munich

I’ve gotten some feedback that some of you would like to hear about my favorite places to eat in the world. Today I’m beginning a series called “Memorable Meals” where I will write about those places that loom large in my memory, rather than my latest restaurant experience. I will, of course, include the latest information about the establishment in case you’re inspired to seek it out on your own.

There’s a German word, gemütlich, which means pleasant and congenial and has connotations of coziness. I found the embodiment of that word as I stepped through the doorway of a small 400 year old stone building in Munich’s Viktualienmarkt on a gray rainy evening. The Bratwurstherzl
restaurant is at least as old as the Viktualienmarkt, where meats and produce have been offered in the open air daily for nearly 200 years. I imagine that their earliest customers would feel right at home there today. Though it’s close to the heart of the tourist Munich, the majority of patrons always seem to be speaking German.

Here homemade bratwurst is grilled over beechwood coals and the local Hacker-Pschorr beer is tapped from a wooden barrel. Although there’s an extensive menu of Bavarian specialties, I wasn’t going to visit the Bratwurstherzl and skip the bratwurst. I ordered a plate of twelve sausages with Weinsauerkraut and a beer. Now before you get too excited about the twelve sausages, let me explain that traditional Bavarian bratwurst is made into small links about the size of American breakfast links.

The bratwurst was served on a heart-shaped tin plate with the Weinsauerkraut in a separate dish. It was quite simply the best sausage, the best beer and the best kraut I’ve ever had. Ever. The bratwurst was juicy without being greasy and was delicately perfumed by the beechwood smoke. The kraut was not too sour, filled with complex flavors, nothing like the hot dog topping we know in the States. The beer was sublime, with a wonderful yeasty, slightly floral taste and a long-lasting foamy head.

I think that this place is so special, that it’s worth visiting every time you’re in Munich to sample the old favorites and try new ones like traditional pretzels and schnitzels. My clients have come back with glowing reports after I recommended it to them. Why don’t you try it too?

Bratwurstherzl is located at number 1 Dreifaltigkeitsplatz not far from the Marienplatz subway station. They’re open seven days a week for lunch and dinner.

Photo Credit: Becky Gould

look what arrived in the post!

Several years ago I was contacted by a lady who wanted to sell some quilts. I bought some lovely things from her and every now and then she emails me about things she has found and wants to know if I'm interested in buying them. She wrote about a week ago to let me know she had some quilts and today they arrived in a huge feedsack. They are just gorgeous, my quick pic of them all of the sofa does not do them justice of course, the lighting wasnt there but still, I think you can see how wonderful they are. Now isn't that a nice thing to receive in the post? A huge bag of quilts! The stuff dreams are made of.....