Charlotte comes for tea, and other furry creatures.

As you can see, the latest uninvited guest to our home has twice as many legs as the usual ones….. I think she’s quite sweet but friends of ours who have met her have screamed and run away in horror.  I suppose she could be poisonous but thankfully we will never know as she had already passed on when we met her, poor love.  [We have named her for EB White’s book, Charlottes Web, in case anyone was wondering.] Of course this is something you would expect to see in the Australian outback, not in one’s garden in the holy land, but as they say about aliyah – never a dull moment.

We still have a multitude of cats that treat our garden as a main thoroughfare. Jojo and I spend half our day hissing like witches at them. Have never trusted cats since I got scratched by one as a toddler. Unfortunately Karmiel is ruled by cats and I often feel we are just guests in their Kingdom. [Only people who live here will understand what I mean]. They are not the skinny vermin-like creatures you see in the rest of the country, these are fat and wealthy looking, despite being “wild”. Something to do with the law round here that says we have to look after them. Apparently it’s fine to mistreat chickens and cows but cats have to be given Respect. Seems a bit arbitrary to me.

On our way  home from visitng Eshchar last friday we slowed to a halt to view a Hyrax the side of the road, much to Jojo’s delight. They are native to this area and I am proud to say he can identify one. We then had to grind to a very sudden halt to wait for this to cross the road:

Well, we were going to wait but we calculated that it would take most of the afternoon and we had to get back for shabbat and all so Husband picked it up and moved it along. He retreated into his shell briefly, but we spied him trotting off again merrily before we set off.