The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Killing Tarantulas with a Machete

Things go bump in the night. Iguanas are scrabbling on the roof and geckos scream intermittently all night long. The howlers don’t wait for daylight to announce dawn and a lot of birds and insects apparently never sleep. I guess they don’t expect us to sleep either. There’s no shutting the windows — we use screens to cool down at night so the nocturnal cacophony is ours to share.

Last night a rhinoceros beetle the size of a VW hit our bamboo shade in the dark wings beating the slats like a drummer OD’ing. Trust me, you come out of your dreamy slumbers ready for combat. Only to turn on the light to find a 3 inch bug catatonic on the shade. I found him next morning where I tossed him, dead, I thought, but no, just resting up.

I would hate to wander the trails here in the dark. Odds are good you’d run into something poisonous, toxic, dangerous or malevolent. Trust me, nettles seem rather benign from my vantage here, compared to a fer-de-lance or a scorpion or a crocodile or a tarantula. Let’s don’t even mention ocelots, jaguars, snapping turtles or coral snakes, poison toads, boa constrictors, boar peccaries or the well named vampire bat. Back home I don’t fear much of anything unless it’s on two legs — down here I feel like food, no doubt why we clear jungle, drain swamp, clearcut the wilderness. The denizens give us the creeps.

I think we’ll emerge fairly unscathed, maybe even make a truce with our unseen predators. I’m told the ‘Ticos’, the Costa Rican natives, kill any snake on sight. When I asked why, I was told they were deathly afraid of them. A gringo here at Costa Rica Larry’s was helping clear trail by machete when a tarantula fell down his shirt front. In his terror he took the machete to the armpit the spider had crawled into, carving himself up like a Turkey dinner. Fear is primal. Nature, to most of us, is terrifying. I suggest we all put down the machetes before we hurt ourselves needlessly. Course, I don’t want my armpit to be the home of a tarantula family either. The chiggers there already are bad enough.

Even down here in Costa Rica, high up on the mountain, news of the Old World filters in. Trump referred to African nations as shitholes, we heard. I’m sure he would include a few Central American ones too, half of South America and probably a couple of blue states in Norte Americano. It raises the question: what actually constitutes a shithole?

I’ve been meeting a few ex-pats down here. One gave Costa Rica Larry an amusing roll of toilet paper with Obama’s face on every square. Hilarious, no? They seem to be fed up with high taxes. Or really, any taxes. Larry’s 18 acres and two haciendas cost him about $120 a year. The roads are shit, the parks have garbage everywhere, there is no army, police are few and far between even though crime is rampant and I have no idea what health care is like here and hope not to find out. School’s look primitive, but what the education is like inside, quien sabe? Although, Larry’s adopted daughter pays a small fortune for private school, so maybe that tells me all I need to know considering he’s as tight fisted an hombre as any I’ve known.

No one likes to pay taxes, but what matters is really how your government spends it. Costa Rica has no military to support. That alone would cut my taxes in half, okay by me. Leave a couple of nukes in place and go back to Don’t Tread On Me. I suppose we could go back to dirt roads, rutted and pot-holed, impassable in the rains, only one lane in places. Grade em every few years, save us a small fortune. Drop the welfare system, food stamps, go to Survival of the Fittest. Well, Survival of the Wealthy. Schools? Okay, some public ones, but if you want a real education, not a daycare K-12, private schools. Taxes going WAY down, I bet.

Be MY definition of a shithole country. A country that helps the rich but not the poor? Shithole! A country that refuses decent health care but wants more for the military? Meets my definition! A country that no longer believes in science but does believe most of the lies its leader spews out incessantly? Turd world nation!

Before I started calling nations names, I’d want them defined more precisely. If our pot is black, let’s leave the kettle alone, maybe clean up our own act first.

Costa Rica is a Hot Spot. The Word is out: cheap real estate, great climate, stable government, low taxes, tropical paradise. Half the surfers, the Nuevo hippies, adventurous snowbirders, disaffected Republicans who fled the Obama era, gold hunters and real estate hucksters, eco-tourists, bird watchers and yuppies in search of the Next New Place — they’re all here or coming soon.

After all, we’re here too. I have to say, I’m really glad we aren’t going to the main tourist sites — we’re hauling around Costa Rica Larry’s backroads, bayou bars and backwash villages. Se Vende signs are everywhere. For Sale. They’ll carve this country up from beach to mountain vista, Americanize it, sanitize it and monetize it. The first ones here, bottom of the pyramid scheme. Later … not so lucky, amigo. Time to move on to the Next Big Thing.

Call me cynical and step on my rose colored glasses. Yah shure, the grass is greener here, perfect greens on the 18 hole golf courses I see behind the concrete fences of the gated communities. Fairways lined with palms. Palms lined with money. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Here, the middle class gringo is rich.

The poor? I guess the jobs working for the gringo offer some greenery too. We bought America with beads and trinkets, then … well, it’s the story of the world, I guess. Ask nice, see if that works, if not … Ask the Hawaiians. Ask the Seminoles. The Cherokee. The Mandan.

Maybe you shouldn’t want to live in a place that’s paradise. They’ll pave it and put in a parking lot next to the casino/resort. The South End was undiscovered when I came, maybe the first wave of immigration. Now the wealthy have found the bluffs with views and the beaches. At first the natives built their homes — now they mow their lawns. We bought the house next door and rent it to the tourists. Who think they’ve discovered paradise. We’re paving the way….