Pinar de la Venta, where I live, is a fraccionamiento located eight kilometers west of Guadalajara and nestled in a mile-high forest– wherein reside all sorts of creatures.
This was just what my wife Susy and I wanted when we were house hunting in the 1980s: communing with nature in rural Mexico, falling asleep each night lulled by the chirping of crickets and a whole orchestra of frogs. So we made our home in Pinar de la Venta. Ay qué bonito! Welcome to the woods!
Let’s begin with the bugs.
On our very first morning, we wandered out of our bedroom only to discover the cadavers of several little yellow scorpions lying here and there on the floor. It did not take us long to figure out that we had killed these scorpions while walking at night to the bathroom or going to the kitchen for a drink of water.
Thus we discovered our first rule for survival in rural Mexico: Never walk around in bare feet at night!
Over the following months I collected enough dead scorpions to fill a jar.
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