Roadkill in Paradise

We our proud of a certain distinction among all others...
Our house and yard is the Bermuda Triangle for rodents and tiny creatures. Many a four-legged varmint has met his untimely demise while visiting our lovely sub-tropical cottage.

Coconuts falling incessantly from our many trees all day and night finally nailed a rat dead on. We awoke to the now-familiar death smell one morning outside our window. There lay a huge cannonball of a coconut on the grass, with four tiny rodent legs sticking straight out from beneath it. Smashed like a grape, he was.

We have a small closet where all the toilet paper is stored and every once in a while we hear a scampering of critters behind its walls. When the scampering ceases, the smell arrives and hangs around for weeks, followed by a horde of black flies, a la Amityville Horror, that materialize out of nowhere and cling to the window screens until we open each one to let them out. The Death Closet, we call it. It has claimed the lives of 2 critters since we started living here last year.
















Here's a tire-squashed squirrel that crawled under our studio window to gasp his last gasp. We followed the flies to find this sweet prize. Thank god for men! If it wasn't for Matt I couldn't open any jars and I'd be neck deep in bugs and dead squirrels. That's not entirely true...I can certainly open jars...but as for the bugs and dead squirrels, well, he and I both know the truth about this matter.

Many a gecko has been pressed flat in closed doors, windows, or wasted by our otherwise lazy and slothlike kitty. Since Howie can't catch a bird anymore in his slovenly middle age, he's regulated to swatting at lizards, which are abundant inside and out. The only critters that escape this damned mortal coil are the racoons, who chitter loudly all night while humping on our roof. We've whipped coconuts at them, all to no avail. Not even the power-washer, which can strip off your skin, deters them. They just smell a bit nicer to each other, I suppose.

At night, while we sit drinking cheap red wine and watching The Family Guy, I swear I see tiny, furry ghosts scamper across the Saltillo tile. Our house is haunted with the anguished spirits of rats, squirrels, mice, frogs and lizards. The Closet of Death retains a morbid smell year round, and getting a roll of toilet paper is quite the unfortunate chore. The itty bitty pink rake is ever at the ready to pull yet another stinky corpse from under the bushes. But this is south Florida, after all. There are parrots, and blue skies, and coconut palms...and there are hurricanes, and critters that take the long dirt nap in your bushes.