Matt, the scorpion killer.

Posted by matt1988

Dia 4 (written by Matt today)

So this morning seemed normal, until we started to walk to the sanctuary. The rain last night was much harder than it has been since we got here, and it continued into the morning quite a bit. All of the roads were completely under water. We had muddy rain water up to our ankles for the majority of the walk to Rainsong. It seems that this was above average waterfall for the area, as many of the locals had surprised looks on their faces as they waded through the water.

We made it to the sanctuary drenched, even everything under our ponchos were wet. Today we got to stay at the sanctuary like we did yesterday. To start the day we met and fed the porcupines. We cut up some papaya and plantains, covered those with some vitamins, and then topped it off with some sprouts. There was also the option of feeding them Mary's leftover pasta from last night, but the fruit was already cut up.

We entered the cage and put the food down, and instantly we had some friendly porcupines crawling all over us. They are much more affectionate and happy to be around people than I would have ever guessed. Of course, these porcupines were raised by humans, but I never would have thought porcupines are soft.

After we had our fill of playing with porcupines, it was time to feed the monkeys. There are four monkeys, one older one named Mona, and some younger ones. We entered their habitat (walking past that huge spider we had an encounter with yesterday) and let them climb up onto whichever human they preferred.

We then walked them back to a sitting area where we got to hang out with them and feed them milk from bottles. The monkeys were very picky, and would try to steal the bottles from each other. Mona, the feisty oldest monkey, bit Zoe in the knuckle pretty hard. Don't worry, Zoe is OK, she got some stuff on it right away, and the monkeys have been tested negative for rabies.

When the monkeys had had their fill, we moved onto feeding the parrots. We did the same thing we did yesterday, with one major difference. Today, while getting the food containers from the cage containing the two larger parrots, I was confronted with a scorpion. This scorpion walked up the door and inches away from my hand as I was leaving the cage. I did not notice this until Zoe told me to get away and screamed. After getting away I looked back and did not see a scorpion at all. The scorpion was still there, he was just pretty small.

I was pretty freaked out, so I went and talked to some other volunteers about what to do. One of them suggested using a knife and shooing it away. When we got back, Mary gave me a machete and told me to kill it. After a bit of a fight getting it to move to a location where I could smash it, I did exactly that. And my encounter with the scorpion was over.

This was the end of our day at the sanctuary, and we started our walk home. The walk home was much drier, as the rain had slowed down drastically. We stopped at the supermarket (Super David's) and bought some snack foods.
Once we got back to the hotel, we peeled off our wet clothes, rinsed ourselves and dried off. We came to find out that our shower had leaked into the lobby below, so we had to switch rooms. We are now in room #24. We were in room #22, which was very cool considering that is the day we got married.
We just finished eating our lunch of tortilla's, rice, avocado, and beans that Zoe put together (it was delicious). And now we plan to relax for the rest of the day.
Now that you know why I do not write these posts (all posts would be ridiculously long if I did) I will let you go.

Love,
Matt and Zoe