13. Knife!

Today, we started the day by checking the fence around the large banana field. Yesterday, we discovered that after the heavy rain and wind during the night, a huge clump of tree creepers and vines had fallen down right on top of the fence, and stretched it. Yesterday, we didn't have good tools for attacking this clump of entangled green mess, but we at least got it off the fence. So today, we had exchanged one of the clippers (the worst one) for a machete. That is the solution in most tropical areas (or areas prone to jungles, if you will) for clearing and cutting things. No garden shears here! Instead you have this huge, heavy, dangerous-looking knife. I felt a bit dangerous and really cool swinging a knife which was as long as my arm. So we attacked the green clump, and managed to get it out of the way. It was a lot of fun (but I am sure I will feel it in my arms tomorrow).

We then proceeded to continue clearing the main pasture of tree creepers, bushes and other green things the horses don't eat. I was swinging my machete, clearing some vines and creepers from an old rotting tree stump (or something like that). I had just removed a curtain of green stuff, and I saw a white shell. You know, the kind you find on the sea shore (the big versions). Then I realised that it was alive! The shell was the home of a hermit crab! And this is a ten minute walk UP quite a steep hill from the beach! How in the world did that get there? And how did it survive? Yes, it was a moist spot under a wet, rotting tree, protected by a curtain of tree creepers. But all the same, I found it incredible. And the crab wasn't very small, either, as you can see from the picture. I was just baffled, and after watching it for a while, ran to get my camera. I had to save this moment forever, and create proof that I actually did experience this (impossible though it may seem).

That concludes this 'strange and really cool things that happened to me today' blog post. And for those of you wondering, I sort of saved the poor crab. I put it under a similar curtain by the same tree which I did not cut away. But I still wonder how much longer it could have survived. Oh, the absurdities of nature (and oh, how incurably curious I am).

Books read: 17
Pages read: 4680

Edit: I found out the crab was actually a land crab, but I still don't really know how it lives. It presumably eats bugs and other things it finds. In Norwegian, 'landkrabbe' (directly translated: 'land crab') is the name of a non-seafaring person, a 'landlubber' according to google translate. I find that name for this crab quite fitting, so I have now named my first crab (or type of crab, if you are being picky).