Wildlife Encounter

I used to live on a hill in Colorado, where wildlife sightings were fairly common. We had deer, elk, foxes, coyotes, bears, and assorted small animals like porcupines and squirrels in our yard on a regular basis. Since moving to Japan, I have discovered a different variety of wildlife - the Mutant Invertebrates.

I have seen spiders the size of a dinner plate:

(No I did NOT take this picture...there's no WAY I'm putting my hand that close to one of those!!)

Snails as long as my hand:

(This one is my hand)

And Hermit crabs tenacious enough to climb three flights of stairs:

(Also my hand. This guy was most of the way up the stairs to my third floor apartment.)

I've also seen Lots and LOTS of fish:

(Ok, this was an aquarium, I cheated.)

Yesterday I found my first island mammal. First I almost hit one with my car. Then later that day, I found one trapped inside our trash corral (think dumpster, but it's a walled off place with a gate). It looks like a cross between a weasel and a squirrel. I had to google it. It's a mongoose.

(I didn't take this picture either. Horray for google images!)

So that was my new thing that I learned yesterday. Also, my story is 17,000 words long now. Horray for that too!