It's a jungle out there!

On Tuesday morning, Luna chased a snake out of the dense vine that grows over one wall of our lakou. It struck at her, she hissed, it slithered around, I'm pretty sure I yelled and am absolutely sure that Mirlonde screamed and jumped around in terror. And then, of course, I grabbed my camera and followed it out onto the street for a photo op:

Mirlonde refused to go back out into the yard. She said that her neighborhood is better than ours, safer, because it's all concrete and the houses are so close together that there is no space for trees or weeds where snakes can hide. I didn't tell her that Ben picked up the snake and set it loose in our neighbor's yard (empty because their house collapsed in the earthquake).

Everyone says that there are no poisonous snakes in Haiti, but in Cameroon venomous snakes abound and a fear of snakes has been embedded into my subconscious since childhood. I am continually grateful to live in a rare Port-au-Prince neighborhood that is shaded by trees, with vines thick enough to harbor snakes, but am definitely watching my step in the garden these days.