Bugs in Cuernavaca

I haven’t written a lot about bugs since we arrived in Cuernavaca, but the time has come.  But I have taken some pictures of a few of the many-legged friends that we’ve made since moving here.  These aren’t necessarily the most common bugs, but simply a few I’ve tried to photograph.

Of course, it’s not easy to take pictures of bugs with a cheap camera (actually, we got our camera for free – who’s complaining?), so the photos aren’t usually great quality.  A few I didn’t bother to upload at all.

Some bugs we have here are familiar in Canada too… such as potato bugs (woodlice), crickets, centipedes, snails and ants.  Of course, some of the ants here are supersized.  There’s grasshoppers, spiders and moths.  Some may be in Canada too, but were new to me.

One well known blight of Cuernavaca is the scorpion.  There are various kinds, some more venomous than others, and we’ve seen more than one kind in our house.  Here’s one fellow, and you can get an idea how big he is as compared to the ant (this is an average-sized ant, not a super-sized one).

Thankfully, we’ve only seen a few of these in our house.

In our last newsletter, I wrote a little about our adventures with scorpions and black widow spiders.

 At one point we had quite a few black widows in our yard (and some in our house!) (when was that?  Oh yes, shortly before we called the exterminator!).  We’re thankful to the Lord that so far our kids were never stung or bitten, in spite of the fact that they play all over that yard quite a bit.

I got quite a few pictures of the black widows, but this one is my favourite.  You can see the tell-tale red "hourglass" on her belly.  They also usually have red on top.  We’ve gotten so we’re better able to recognize their webs, so that helps a lot.

And of course you won’t forget the vinagrillo that I came across – I haven’t seen many more of those.

Don’t get the impression that we’ve been constantly overrun by bugs.  Some of these we only saw once or twice.  But the safer bugs have provided hours of entertainment!  😉  And if you wear your shoes and don’t stick your hand in dark corners, you’ll probably be fine.

Anyway, check out our little Bugs of Cuernavaca album.  If you think you know what one is, leave a comment!

Edit: Oops! Sorry, the photo album was password protected. It should be working now – try again!

And here’s just one more for the blog – this bug appears to be admiring himself in the bug-mirror…