St. Thomas · Real Estate

Welcome to My Jungle

Living on a tropical Caribbean island is truly the stuff of dreams

Tell someone you live on a Caribbean island and their first response is a longing sigh, immediately followed by the words, "Oh, that must be paradise."

Having lived on St. Thomas for several years, all I can do is smile gently at those misguided fools. They have no idea.

Living on a tropical Caribbean island is truly the stuff of dreams, provided, of course, that those dreams include nightmarish scenes filled with every kind of six-legged critter imaginable along with a healthy dose of reptiles, amphibians and people-eating plants thrown in just to round out the dreamscape.

It's a jungle out there. Right out there. Directly beyond my front door, as a matter of fact, it's a jungle. It's also a jungle on the other side of my office window, peeking around my back deck and, if I don't act quickly, working it's way through my bedroom window as well.

There are varieties of grass in what poses as my backyard that have been known to swallow entire goats and were once seen attempting to organize a labor union. Apparently, it's hard work swallowing goats and the grass wanted to be sure that each blade got it's proper due.

Completely encompassing my front yard is a rubber plant that could swallow an entire tire factory. It may have. I don't want to ask. I'm afraid of it.

Horrible Shrieking Things

All of these plants harbor tree frogs whose combined calls can effectively drown out the loudest action epic television has to offer. The frogs, or the horrible shrieking things as we like to call them, have stationed themselves outside our bedroom window and often lull us to sleep with their piercing mating calls.

Who knew it would be possible to detect the call and response pattern of a hot-to-trot tree frog couple while wearing earplugs and jamming two pillows over your head? Thank goodness the tree frogs only get going at night. It would be horrible if they shrieked all day long when there were other noises to drown out their love songs.

Funny how the travel brochures fail to mention that the tropics are so, well, tropical. Hot, muggy and bursting at the seams with insects, frogs and lizards. Outside is only part of the problem. These critters have figured out how to get inside too.

Residents of My Bathroom

A recent non-scientific census of the residents of my bathroom yielded 43 mosquitoes, two spiders - apparently members of the non-mosquito-eating variety, one lizard, part of a giant moth, two mystery bugs and one cat with a moth-eating grin on her face.

It's the mosquitoes that are driving me mad. Those tiny, blood-sucking monsters are pushing me over the edge. Tropical mosquitoes differ from North American mosquitoes in that they are impervious to bug spray, wily enough to penetrate a mosquito net and absolutely ravenous all of the time.

I spend a large portion of my day actively engaged in killing mosquitoes. It's not a pretty hobby and, as far as I can tell, not terribly effective. I've taken to wearing cloves of garlic around my neck in an attempt to ward off the blood-sucking hordes.

It's had no effect on the mosquitoes although I haven't seen a full-sized vampire in weeks and my husband, the pizza lover, has been terribly affectionate of late so I suppose the garlic has had some positive effects.

Our writer Lyssa Graham is a true island girl. She'll live anywhere as long as it's completely surrounded by water, flooded with sunshine and way, way, way off the beaten path.

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See you on the Island, John "Big Hat" Walsh