Stick bugs

One day I was using the water faucet near these plants and I felt someone looking at me. I looked up to see this strange insect. I've seen brown ones and I've seen green ones but I've never seen one with a green body and brown and white striped legs and head. He was a nice patient insect and waited for me to go inside to get my camera.




We have several types of walkingsticks and praying mantis insects here in Honduras. Mantids are carnivorous and feed on other insects. The female is known for devouring the male while mating. It is said that large ones even stalk small frogs, lizards, and hummingbirds. Once thought to be desirable in the garden, now some organic gardeners believe that mantids may eat too many beneficial insects as well.


Most walkingsticks are harmless herbivores who feed on foliage, mostly of trees and shrubs.

Two-lined walkingsticks will defend themselves with an acidic chemical sprayed from the end of their abdomen. They often aim for the eyes, and the chemical can cause pain and temporary blindness. Pets may experience this more often than humans.


Unlike North American walkingsticks, tropical walkingsticks have wings and can fly. They can also regenerate lost legs.

This one was inside the house and was about 4 inches long (10 cm.). We have seen some that are so well camouflaged that the truly look like sticks. Those were very large, about 6 inches long (15 cm.)

You can click on any of the pictures to enlarge them in a separate window.

Cultural differences: The cell phone

Selling cell phones on credit is very popular.
The cost is usually about 30% higher.

For many years it has been difficult to get a landline phone here in Honduras. Depending upon where you live, it is often impossible. There are no lines at any price in some areas. For that reason as well as the status symbol, cell phones are extremely popular.

It seems that everyone has a cell phone. That may not seem so different than the U.S. or any place else, until you think about the poverty here. The population is 7.5 million with 60% below the poverty line, but there are 3.5 million cell phones. That is a lot of phones when you also consider that 3 million of the population are under 15 years of age. People who may only have one pair of shoes will have a cell phone. People who don't have electricity will have a cell phone. I see people riding bicycles or horses talking on cell phones. The people who don't have one want one so bad they can taste it.

Of course, once they have the phone, it is inexpensive. Oh, the price of calls in Honduras is among the highest in Central America, but no one ever has any minutes, so that makes it cheap. We don't pay for incoming calls in Honduras and text messages are free or cheap.

If you have an emergency and need to use someone's phone (with money in hand to pay for the call!), you can ask 10 people and I promise you that not one person will let you use their phone. They will all say that they don't have minutes.

Another odd thing about cell phone usage in Honduras is that calls are almost never returned. You can call someone and leave a message that you want to buy something or hire them for L.100,000 and most won't spend L.20 to return your call. Many business have calls to cell phone blocked because they cost more than landline calls. That is cutting off a lot of potential customers to save a little money.

At best, if they really feel like they must talk to you, some people will call your number and hang up immediately before you can answer so that you will have to call them back on your minutes. It's not only poor people who do this either.

When a cell phone rings in Honduras, it MUST be answered. People can be at a wedding, in church, in the middle of a job interview, or performing surgery. It doesn't matter. That phone must be answered.

I don't feel that urgent need to have my cell phone with me every minute. If it is someone I know, the phone will tell me that they called. If their number isn't in my phone, then it's probably a wrong number anyway. But back when we were painting the house, whenever my phone rang, Julissa would grab it, break her neck to run out the door, down the stairs, and around the house to find me, and then climb up a 10 foot ladder to hand me the phone.

Read FH-1100 Pilot Bob's accounts here and here. In one case, two Hondurans, who were meeting with him to ask for a U.S. $20,000 donation, stopped the meeting to take calls leaving him sitting there waiting for them to finish their chats with "more important" people.

El Jefe and I were talking about this the other day. I said that I do believe if a typical Honduran was, say, handcuffed to a table in one room and his cell phone rang in another room, he would cut his hand off to go answer that phone. Well, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but for sure he would cut the leg off the table to get to the phone. ;-)

How addicted are you?

73%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Only 73%? How can that be?

I saw this blogging addiction badge on someone's blog and was curious to take the test. My score is lower than I thought it would be.

Then I saw the coffee addiction test and had to take that. I'm sure my coffee addiction score would be much higher if we had more options here in La Ceiba.

I am 75% Addicted to Coffee

Once I find one of these test sites, I can never quit. When I saw the film rating test for blogs, I had to see how the blogicito would rate. No surprise here.

I'm kind of proud of my spelling. I once won a spelling bee, in 4th grade, I think. Of course, Firefox spell checker helps me out a lot, too. This test checks for wrong words as well, like their or there, your or you're, it's or its. Those are some of my pet peeves when reading − but I have spotted these same errors in my writing, too, which I hate. When you see spelling errors here, blame it on the fingers, not the brain. ;-D

I Scored a 100%!

This test also uses the word 'definitely,' one of the most frequently misspelled words in blogs. I've often seen is spelled 'defiantly' which makes for a funny interpretation of the sentence.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure and transparency and all that, here is my 8th grade science test.




You can take any of these quizzes by clicking on the badge. Have fun.

(Before you ask, no, I wasn't looking for online dating! Just the quizzes.)