There’s a lot of wildlife in Honduras, from new and strange to common and unexciting. Although most of what I’ve seen is the latter, our simple-living lifestyle here places us in a much closer and intimate contact with these creatures than in the States – especially those of the insect variety.
Thus, I’ve decided to put together a list of what I’ve found to be the 4 Most Annoying Bugs to have impacted my life here so far! Although they are (or have been) frustrating at times, there is a certain humor to their presence. It’s all a good part of a good adventure!
Let’s begin:
#4: Cicadas
This cicada has just shed it's old skin.
It’s hard to beat a warm, quiet morning while I walk up the path toward the offices to start my day of work. At least, it was until the cicadas arrived in mid-February.
In case anyone doesn’t know, cicadas look a bit like giant flies – almost the size of your thumb. They are known for their “singing” (it sucks), a constant clicking sound made from contracting muscles which resonate inside their hollow abdomens.
Why are these annoying? The noise they make is constant. And loud. And they seemed to like hanging out near the offices where I work during the day, so I’d hear them all the time.
It can’t be that bad, right? Well, here’s a little excerpt from Wikipedia to help explain why these musicians are so lovely:
Some cicadas produce sounds up to 120 dB among the loudest of all insect-produced sounds. This is especially notable as their song is technically loud enough to cause permanent hearing loss in humans, should the cicada sing just outside the listener’s ear.
Oh, and they pee on you.
#3: Ants
There is NO food there! Nothing to see here, move along!
There is nothing very unusual or unexpected with ants. They’re generally harmless, do their normal ant things, and that’s that.
But, they find themselves everywhere. For example, on a few of the tables in the volunteer house live some tiny, tiny ants. They are fast, hard to see, and crawl on everything. On books and magazines, on laptops, and sometimes onto your arms (which, sometimes you don’t notice at first since they’re so small).
One time, Amanda took a magazine from this one table and placed it on the desk in her room. Naturally, the ants which were hiding between the pages took up house on her desk, and even managed to spread to her roommate Jen’s desk. Honestly, these ants are not bad all the time, but they definitely get on people’s nerves.
Some slightly larger ants also like taking up residence in our rooms, sometimes with single-file lines of them crawling from the closet to the bathroom door to inside the bathroom… I really don’t know where they are going or why half the time.
And that’s the other annoying thing about the ants here – what the heck are they up to?
It makes sense to see them cleaning up crumbs on the ground, but why are they all over a barren table running around in circles at full speed? Why are they in the bathroom following the groove of a wall tile one day, and then chilling out in the groove one tile over the next day?
If I could interview the ants, this is basically how it would go.
Sometimes I’ll find one of those guys checking out my toothbrush. Really dude, I mean, last I checked, ants don’t even have teeth.
#2: Ronrons (a.k.a. June Beetles)
Easter dinner was a little too romantic for this ronron.
I think if there was ever a good argument against the theory of natural selection, ronrons would be it. The are so incredibly dumb, and yet, they still exist.
Ronrons are small, flying beetles – roughly the size of a piece of popcorn – and they mostly come around at night. Sounds pretty normal for a bug, but, these… these are ronrons. They will fly into your face.
They fly towards lightbulbs, hit them, and fall to the ground. They will fly into walls, and fall to the ground. They will walk straight off a table, and fall to the ground.
Sometimes they’ll just be walking along, and then for some reason flip onto their backs. Whenever ronrons are on their backs (whether from this or after smacking into a wall and falling down), they do this hilarious wiggle while trying to flip over again. So at least they’re somewhat amusing when they aren’t just… well, pretending to be suicide bombers.
#1: Cockroaches
No me gusta.
Cockroaches are a pretty obvious choice for this kind of list, especially since no one likes them. That said, there’s really nothing much to say about them.
Here, they come in a variety of sizes; small to relatively large. For the most part, like the ants, they keep to themselves and do their roachy things.
Roachy things in our kitchen, like:
- Covering the kitchen counters when the lights go out
- Crawling into bags of flour
- Sneaking towards cakes or food you leave on the table while you’re away
- Hanging out in the handles of pots and pans
- Crawling all over the clean dishes on the drying rack in the middle of the night
- Die in the middle of the floor for you to step on when you forget they are there
- MAKING A HOME OUT OF THE COFFEE MAKER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Just imagine waking up in the morning, just wanting a cup of coffee, and when you open the lid of the coffee maker to pour the water in, a bunch of small cockroaches crawl out and scatter away.
That’s some hardcore coffee.
Honorable Mention:
The following bug didn’t make the list, but probably only because I have only seen it once, and I have no idea what it is.
Whatever this is, I don't want to see it again!
I barely had time to snap a photo of this thing before it crawled away under a dark sink. It was about the size of a child’s hand, and definitely wasn’t a spider. Whatever it is, I hope I don’t see it ever again!
Bonus Photos:
And, last but not least, here is a little photo gallery of some other insects I’ve seen around – many of these only once or twice so far. As usual, you can click the thumbnail images to expand the photos. Enjoy!
Peace,
John
).
