Costa Rica 3

I have some bad news. Bahoo has passed away. All the cute animals still look like her, though, and she remains a prototype for the small, the sweet, the button-eyed creatures. She had really soft, floopity paws and an intense little green gaze. She was silver and gold, and she will be missed from this world.

In other news, we went to the beach today. There were so many little hermit crabs that it looked like an exodus of pebbles in some places. There were lots of regular type, sideways-walking crabs too, and many big pelicans fishing in the surf. I swam as much as I could without getting a sunburn. It rains every afternoon, so the surgeon general recommended window of time is not a possibility; it´s high noon or nothing. The ocean felt like a bath...with rocks at the bottom. I could only imagine how many tiny beings had to flee in the wake of my big mammal body. The animals here have to be so on top of things. The flies hover with alarming precision. The birds and insects all seem so fleet and accurate. They are well evolved, I guess, because the living (heat, water) is so easy here that competition must be brutal.

The rain is a wonderful thing. The basin of jungle fills up with mist as the storm advances. Sometimes it´s like a solid wall of fog, and then the outlines of trees will appear far away like tracings against the white, and then the haze will shift and swallow it up again.