After our hygiene clinics in Mae Sot, we drove back to Chaing Mai for the weekend. When Monday rolled around we packed up the truck and headed out a few hours South-West. We crossed the tallest mountain in Thailand (Doi Inthanon) and found ourselves on a property that is owned by the organization we are working with. Christian Outreach Center, or C.O.C., has a building under construction there that serves as a children’s home and a soon-to-be church. We got to get our hands dirty with some manual labor and help the process along! It felt good to get our sweat on.
We moved piles of bamboo…
We cleared out vines and jungle brush while stumbling across the spiders, scorpions and snakes that called them home…
Meet the Golden Web spider, or the Orb spider. These big boys are usually out of our way, dangling above in the trees. You can stay up there, please and thank you.
Google helped me out with these scorpion photos. I haven’t snapped a shot myself, but we have seen them hanging out, battling till death-do-they-part with the spiders on the ground. (I am rooting for these guys just so you know)
Do you know the type of spiders that seem to have an abdomen too large for their legs? The sort that bob up and down as they run? Not too hairy, yet fat enough to be alarming. I had the pleasure of one like that running out of a bamboo pole I was lugging, onto my hand, and UP MY ARM. And no, it was NOT small. I clinched onto Brad’s arm after swiping it off of me. Probably crushed a few of his bones while trying to gather myself through the tears and hyperventilating. Aracnaphobia anyone?… Yup, that’s me. Now please, feel free to pause from reading this to stand up and shake off that creepy-crawly feeling that is coming over your skin.
Next, we tackled moving more than a couple thousand concrete tiles by hand. Great workout!
Not much more than snails and lizards were living in the top half of them… Those were moved without a moment of concerned wonder. It was especially nice when the light rain shower rolled in to keep us cool…. You go girls!
When the bottom of the pile came around, we found much more interesting surprises. Tell me, what do you think of when you hear “centipede”?…. Small crawling things in America that you like to watch run around cause their legs do that wavey thing as they go. Not cute, but not alarming, right?
Now what do think of when you hear “Monster Centipede, Vietnamese Centipede, Chinese Red Headed Centipede, Asian Forest Centipede?” Well, here is one of the many we killed from those blocks…
Yes, it is poisonous and its bite is extremely painful. It takes about 10 blows to get them good and dead. No worries though, I hear they only reach about 15 inches long and like to hide in shoes. They are FAST! You should have seen our men exercising their ninja star abilities as they frisbeed cement tiles towards the ground trying to pin these suckers down and chop heads off. Pretty impressive aim actually!
Let’s get these metal sheets moved while we ponder on what we have just witnessed….
Everything is smooth sailing until what your moving ends up being home to a hoard of thousands… neigh, millions!… of ants and their eggs. They spread like wildfire when you get your hands near. Before you know it they are up your pants, inside your gloves, and down your shirt running around nipping at your skin. This was our final crawling obstacle of the day.
We fetched buckets of water to dump. Trying to knock them off the building materials long enough to toss them in a bucket and run them across the road before the remaining ants climbed out and onto you.
As for the painting that came afterwards?
No creepy-crawlies there…. Whew!… I have seen bugs here that I never could have imagined in existence. Jungle crawlers are no joke, and it seems that more of them than not are fairly poisonous.
As I look at those huge centipedes and pray I don’t bump into any tarantulas, I get lost in the thought of creation. God is such an abstract guy. Seriously, He made the WEIRDEST things, and lots of them. I can’t help but get a laugh out of it when I picture Him up there making the first cute, little, fluffy bunny rabbit. With its pink, twitchy nose and wiggly tail… and then next He busts out a 2 foot long shelled worm thing, throws a hundred legs on it, and gives it a dash of venom.
I am gonna have to ask Him about that one when I get there. Abstract for sure. I’ll leave you with these comparison photos to get a greater grasp on that.
^^^That’s my baby, Mewtwo! No, not the eel, the cat! Yeah I know, he’s the cutest…
Psalm 104
“19 He made the moon to mark the seasons,
and the sun knows when to go down.
20 You bring darkness, it becomes night,
and all the beasts of the forest prowl.
21 The lions roar for their prey
and seek their food from God.
22 The sun rises, and they steal away;
they return and lie down in their dens.
23 Then people go out to their work,
to their labor until evening.
24 How many are your works, Lord!
In wisdom you made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.
25 There is the sea, vast and spacious,
teeming with creatures beyond number—
living things both large and small.”
