Bugs

Many visit Costa Rica to experience the jungle and hopefully see lots of wild life. Where we live, everyday life does not include most of a tourist's checklist with monkeys, sloths or wild cats. However, there are birds galore whose songs fill the daylight hours and have replaced the drone of the busy city life we used to live around. I suppose the birds are here because there is plenty to eat, plenty of bugs.

There is no end to the bugs here. Just the ants alone are astounding. They are a permanent fixture in our lives in many forms. There are the sugar ants that look like spilled pepper, especially when inadvertently mixed into a pasta sauce; the leaf cutter ants that can clear a tree of its foliage in a night; and then there are the "cleaner" ants who storm through a house by the thousands and clear it of any and all tidbits (we leave when they arrive).

Apart from the ants there are countless butterflies, and beetles in every shape and color with patterns that never cease to amaze me. While I have known of people who have cut their trips short after encounters with super sized spiders and scorpions, for me the bugs are welcome. It is a reminder that we live in nature and our environment has not been sprayed clear of the creepy crawlies.