I don't have Discovery, but I am still watching Animal Planet.

Okay, I am slightly bitter that the Discovery Channel is not included in my 150+ channel satellite dish on top of my rock house in southern Morocco. I LOVE the Discovery Channel and the closest thing I have is an arabic version of National Geographic. While I cannot understand a single thing on it, I watch it because I know they are talking about something nerdy cool. This is my new life :)

Don't worry though, I am still learning a lot about animals and their behavior. My house has turned into Animal Planet.

For some background, my house is made of rocks, stacked on top of each other and the covered in cement. The house I live in was built probably 40 years ago and has developed many cracks as the rocks have settled. Every time a new crack appears, they just throw some more cement on top of it and call it a day. While it does get rid of the apparent crack, it does a terrible job of keeping out the bugs.

My bug issues vary daily based on rainfall, temperature and whether or not I swept the floor or not. Most of the time there are just a stream of tiny bitting ants in my living room and some more gigantic ants searching my floor for food to bring back to their queen. For a while the gigantic ants were collecting random things from my floor and bringing them to a small place behind the door in my bathroom. If I went a way for a few days and came back, they would have made a nice pile and I would wash it away, killing all their hard work. I felt a little bad about it. Then again, the tiny ants did eat an entire box of Good and Plenty that was high up on a shelf in my kitchen. Yep, the whole box. All that was left was tiny crumbs of black licorice.

For a while I had a wasp clan living in my skylight. At first I allowed them to co-exist with me in harmony because, after all, it was hot and they were just looking for shade. When they stung one of my favorite village children, they had to go. I covered the skylight and they were gone.

I only found 2 scorpions in my house, thank God, and they both died. There was no negogiation there.

Recently the giant ants have started to collect bugs and gang up on them. Every once in a while I will notice a group of ants all mauling a poor bug to death.

Since moving to Morocco, I have learned first hand a great deal about bugs, whether I wanted to or not.

The truth is that bugs are just a reality of the place I live and I guess it could be a lot worse. I am just happy they provide me some entertainment :)



Some poor bug getting malled to death by gigantic ants.


This bird that is stuck in my house.....