02 April 2010

About ants and snakes

The little one is scared of ants... Yes, ants! And yes, I am talking about that same little one that once ate wasps and crickets. Whenever she sees an ant she runs away backwards and shouts "femie, femie, mie!, mie!" Which is   'fourmi' and 'mier' both meaning 'ant', respectively in French and Dutch. She's very apt in making things clear as possible, bilingually speaking. Than she also says they are dangerous. Now I have to admit that they are over a centimeter and when they bite, it hurts, and you have trouble getting them off.
She's, luckily, also scared of snakes. And we see a lot of them here! I personally have seen about five or so. But smallish one and the gardener have seen many many more. Just yesterday there was a viper eating a rog inches away from my door.
Cameroon is supposed to be the snake country of the world, yet I had only seen three snakes over there in the two years we lived there. And we did much more unattentive garden walking over there. In our defense, I have to add we had an enormous garden and only acces to a lawn mower once a week - if we were lucky. Here our garden is significantly smaller and we have bought our own lawnmower (that's so grown-up, don't you think?).
But the snakes here in Ivory Coast don't limit themselves to the garden, they crawl into small spaces at the factory, they are on the streets and dirtroads... It's like Cameroonian snakes were more afraid than the ones over here.

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