Critters

Okay, after living in the woods in Pennsylvania for several years, you'd think that we'd be used to all sorts of critters. However, we are just now beginning to realize what it really means to live in Italy, where there's no window screens.

It seems that almost no house in Italy (with very few exceptions) has window screens. Also, since there's almost no air conditioning anywhere (and certainly not in our house), most people just keep windows and doors open during the cool hours. It's actually very nice, and the breezes are fantastic.

Unfortunately, this also means that you end up living with all sorts of critters. We always seem to find HUGH spiders. We're not kidding...John did battle with one in the bathroom that was over an inch wide. Also, we constantly see Italian House Centipedes. Apparently, the spiders and centipedes will fight one another, but we haven't seen that yet.

Lastly, we're constantly running into little lizards. They're everywhere. Luckily they don't seem to come into the house. You can't step outside, though, without seeing one of them. They scamper all over the place, and are kind of cute (in an off-beat reptilian sort of way).