House guests and potential roommates

Living in the bush, I get a fair amount of creatures in my house. By far the most common are ants, spiders resembling daddy long legs, and house flies. The latter is the most annoying by far. I've also killed 2 scorpions and a few bigger spiders, without stopping to photograph them ;)

But some of the larger things that have tried to move in with me include: 

Curious baby goats

Setotojanes, or corn crickets

various lizards, possibly living in my suitcase

a preying mantis

a bat

a non poisonous whip snake, which involved calling my neighbors to help me find it and get rid of it

a mouse

and a bird that got lost in bathroom, with lots of resultant flapping.

All creatures made it out alive except the snake and the mouse. People here kill all snakes, and the mouse had already died because I sprayed too much doom trying to get rid of some ants. Most things I was happy to live and let live, just you know, not in my house. 

An adorable secondary project

This is Snoopy.

She lives on my friend's family compound. I doubt she's 3 years old. In the 2 years I've been here, she's had 2 litters of puppies. None of the second litter lived because the family couldn't afford a vet when they got sick. My friend and I found an expat in Gabs that agreed to pay for Snoopy to get fixed if we could get her to Gabs, and the host family agreed; they have enough dogs.

We tried to make her fancy and clean, but the bath kind of terrified her. She had also never been on a leash, and she wasn't a fan. 

So we carried her across the village, cementing the crazy white people status we already had.

After the first pick up truck ride she hid in a thorn bush, hoping we wouldn't try to pick her up again.

By the second pick up truck ride we realized that bribing her to walk earlier with cheese puffs was a bad idea, because she got car sick. Truck sick?

She still liked us at the end, but was a little leery of getting locked in a room again, so doorways were her favorite spot.

She got a nice cushy ride home after the fact though, AND a new bed, and a much better life.

As a group we've adopting and rescued a good handful of dogs during our service. It's kind of like the starfish story; we know we won't save all the dogs, or fix all of the dogs, here in Botswana or even our villages. So why bother? 

Because it makes lifetime of a difference to the ones we can help :)