Happy Thanksgiving

Stopping by Pilar on my way to celibrate Dia de Gracias with the other nortes in Encarnation. Here´s three images I want to share with you.

1)Owl vs. Lizard - This morning walking out to the routa to catch my bus to Pilar I looked up just in time to see a burrowing owl taking off, following its flight path I saw that it got up to chase a teju guasu off, which one could assume would be all to happy to head into the owl´s burrow and gorge on eggs or fledglings. Not a particually good story, but it made me happy to see it (Its only the 2nd teju guasu I´ve seen)

2)Karaja at our house - Yesterday a karaja (note the scientific name, Alouatta caraya, keeping in mind the spanish pronounce their y´s as j´s. I´ve heard that Guarani is the second most used language in scientific names, after latin of course. I´d don´t know if this is true, but here´s one example) moved into the trees in my host families yard. It was still there this morning. I´ve been watching it with the kids. The highlights have been, a)He pooped (the kids really liked that) b)He scrached his butt (kids also really liked that) c)He´s been eating mbokaja fruits. Once again nothing too exciting, but still I´ve never lived around monkeys before.

3)Kupi´i - Yesterday I helped my host mom take some cattle out to woods/feild and on the way back we were totally enswarmed with kupi´i, which I belive are some type of termite. I got a pic I´ll post when I get the chance.

I guess I decided to tell ya´ll these things just because they are the sort of thing that, while maybe not everyday, aren´t uncommon here, but would never happen back in the USA. or at least they never happened to me.