Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Question of the Day #673

Yesterday, Bish Denham posted a great story about finding a land crab inside the mosquito netting while visiting the islands. Her creepy crab reminded me of a story my mom told me.

When my mom was a little girl, she and her sister were tucked in a bed surrounded by mosquito netting while visiting their grandparents in the Dominican Republic.

In the dark, over and over they heard, "Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh."

Finally one of them turned on the light. A bug with wings as big as a bat flapped on the mosquito netting. They screamed.

Their parents came running and my grandmother, an island native, seeing the culprit, said, "Aye aye aye. Es solo una mariposa!" (It's only a butterfly.)

"Kill it," she said to my grandfather, a native Hungarian whose eyes bulged at the sight of the birdlike creature. She went back to bed as the rest of the family was paralized in fear.

Now, anytime we see a giant bug, my mother and I scream, "Mariposa! Mariposa!" and go into giggle fits. It never gets old.

What wacky critter stories do you have?

xoxo,
Suzanne

10 comments:

  1. A while back I blogged about waking up in the middle of the night to this warm snuffling right over my face. It was a wild donkey that had found its way into the room where I was sleeping! Of course my startled yell started the poor donkey who ran around the room before finding his way out of the house via the kitchen and back porch.

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  2. That's too funny! I have lots of spider stories ... I'm a total arachnophobe and seem to be followed by them, as a result. Seriously ... this weekend, I was swimming in a hotel pool and found two in the water within about a 3 minute span of time!

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  3. After college three of my friends and I backpacked across Europe, traveling by rail and renting rooms all over the continent.

    So one night we were in Nice, France and had rented a room for all four of us. We all partied that night and fell into a deep slumber with the windows wide open allowing the crisp breeze to lull us into dreamland.

    In the morning, my friend C noticed cat prints all across her bed and pillow case plus a scratch on her face. My friend S claimed, "that's weird, I had a dream about a big meowing cat last night."

    There were no screens in the windows and apparently a cat jumped into our room and "pranced" as C says across her face. We're lucky it was only un gato!

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  4. I can still remember his face hee hee!!!!
    :)

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  5. Should I tell the story of the bear by the garage that I saw last week?

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  6. LOL, your story so reminds me of when my oldest cat would go thru the kitty door at night, onto the deck, and return with a huge moth in his mouth, wings on either side, and scared me so that I had to close the door at night.

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  7. I have a really odd looking bug in my garage right now. It's bright green, about the size of a grass hopper, but definitely not one. It hops around too fast to even catch and it chirps like a cricket.

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  8. Sometimes the cats pull the screen door open in the backyard - and being cats, not people - they don't close it. Well, on one of these open door occasions, I heard a strange noise near some bookshelves, went to investigate, and ended up chasing a squirrel back outside using only a broom and a heightened state of freakout.

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  9. You've seen my blog -- ha ha. Where do I start?

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