Merin was holding the ladder for me, when she brushed up against these caterpillars and noticed that the little bastards had envenomated her.

So I did what any responsible older brother would do. I cut off the three leaves that held 50 of the evil creatures, put them on top of a pile of kerosene-soaked paper towels, and we sent them back to the sulphorous pits from whence they came. It was a Viking style pyre, honoring these worthy adversaries as they burned.

(taken with Merin's A1304AT).

I remember watching a program on the Discovery Channel about these critters, and the effects of their toxins on humans. The lady on the program who got stung went into anaphylactic shock, and her pulmonary system shut down causing her to go into cardiac arrest. Merin just got a nasty rash with a burning sensation, probably because she took Benadryl right after getting stung (Thanks Mika!).

Was it wrong to kill these caterpillars? I don't think so because my neighbor regularly brushes up against those leaves when she tends her garden, and there are plenty more of them in the upper canopy that are doing quite fine. I think she'll be happy that they're gone. Was it really necessary to burn them? Yes, yes it was. They inflicted a burning sensation, so it was only fair for them to feel the burn for themselves.

Last night I ate dinner at the Takahashi's, enjoying a huge "hamburg" and introducing them to the liquid red pleasure that is Shiracha. Their daughter and one of my sannensei students, Fumi, is going to Thailand for two weeks this summer and so I thought I'd help to prepare her for the spicy foods that she will encounter.

During dinner, we got around to talking about snakes. I was puzzled when they told me that snakes stink- I had never encountered a snake that I thought was stinky. We debated this point for a while, but I was unconvinced. Then, they told me about a really stupid snake that had eaten a frog and got stuck and died. I was wondering why they thought that the snake was so stupid, when they offered to show it to me. We went out in back of their house to a small road next to a wall of stone, and smelled it before we spotted it with the flashlights. It looked like someone had used a lot of muscle to shove the two and a half foot long snake into a tiny hole. The snake was hanging out of one of the cracks, its neck wrinkled from trying to escape from jammed a hole that was way too small for it to enter. I was intrigued by the stupidity of the snake. I think that it must have been fleeing from something and tried to find a hiding space in a hurry, and in its haste it jammed its head in to the fissure nice and tight. Indeed, a baka hebi.

I was planning on taking pictures in the morning light, but the snake is gone and only a residue of the stink remains. I should have known better. Not much goes to waste out here, and the snake was conveniently hanging there, just inviting some wild animal to pick up some take out.

I recieved this story written by one of my Daiichi High School ichinensei (as an assignment of the VHS program in Kumamoto), and it reminded me of the cat that Justin and Merin rescued. The only differences are that the fictional kitten was rescued from the top of a sky scraper during the day. Justin jumped into a storm gutter and caught the kitten just as it lost its grip and was about to be swept away to be drowned. Anyhow, have a look:

Last night, thunder was sounding. Many people were frightened. At a skyscraper of top, a kitten was mewing. But someone didn?t learn.

Next day, one person helped a kitten and he raised it and it was his great pet.

Oh, and for those of you who don't know, this is an example of the English abilities of a decent 1st year student in one of the better high schools in Kumamoto. I'm quite proud of the abilities of these students, actually.