Crazy Critters

April 25, 2021

Hello everybody,

Another week has passed us by and did end up with another crazy critter sighting in our house. Just moments ago, after I got all my photos lined up and downloaded for the email, I noticed Rui following something skittering across the floor. Naturally, as we've already had two, I assumed it was a scorpion...only to find a giant centipede! Now, giant is probably a bit dramatic, but I'm talking about something that was at least 4-6" long. When you see the picture later, notice that I have it at the bottom of a liter drinking glass to give you a sense of its size. If my handy-dandy field guide is correct, I believe that we found a Giant Desert Centipede. They are mildly poisonous with a painful bite, but there is also good news...they eat arthropods(spiders and scorpions)! I got him into my drinking glass and took him for a walk outside away from the houses. The adventures never stop with the creepy-crawlies around here!

To pick up on a thread from last week about the Mexican state of Chihuahua, my new work buddy, Valentin, has pointed out a few new things to me that I wanted to pass along...kind of a part two to last week's addition. The biggest thing, considering that we come from Pennsylvania, is that Chihuahua is the site of the largest colony of Mennonites(Menonitas locally) in all of Latin America. Close to 100,000 Mennonites live in Mexico with about 90% of them residing in Chihuahua. I was told that it's nothing to go down the street and to see people interacting and buying and selling in Spanish, Raramuri and Alemano Bajo(Low German in Spanish). Now, that being said, our Mennonites back home are German Mennonites and these are Russian Mennonites who split away from the original movement in the German lands starting in the 1500s and began settling in parts of the Russian Empire from then throughout the next three hundred years. By the 1870s a large chunk of them broke off and moved to Kansas & Nebraska in the US and Manitoba in Canada. After a dispute with the Canadian government in the 1920s over the mandatory flying of the Union Jack, a large part of the Canadian group broke off and moved to Chihuahua. They speak a dialect of Low German that is closer to Dutch than what the German Mennonites speak, which is closer to Palatinate and Swiss German. Interestingly, the Amish started out as a part of this group in the 1500s but broke off to form their own group, led by Jakob Amman, in the 1690s when the rest of the German Mennonites would not endorse the practice of shunning. They were all fleeing religious persecution because of their Protestant faith, believing strongly in the separation of Church and State, and also did not believe in baptism until one was old enough to decide to join the church on their own...shunning just proved to be one of the earlier causes for the movement to begin splitting into all the branches that we see today. Just to think that I grew up hearing English and Pennsylvania Dutch everywhere, while dreaming about the Iroquois and Delaware languages that all of our local place names were made up from, to now be working with someone who grew up hearing Spanish, Low German and Raramuri everywhere around him...what a world we live in! I was also told specifically about Basaseachic Falls National Park in Chihuahua, so I included a link below about it from Wikipedia, as well as one about the Mennonites in Mexico, and the Mennonites, too, in general. If I ever make it down there for a visit I'll have to see how different Plautdietsch is from Pennsilfaanisch Deitsch! Just putting this out there for the universe, my buddy is single and loves everything Mennonite and is looking to settle down in the next few years...

So, that's about it for this week. At the work site I've been helping lower the level of the floor and remove all the backfill necessary to accomplish that. We also got a room done with that and then brought enough gravel in to cover the floor with 4" of it, before then, again, having to dig down through it to lay out the radon lines. Another day we made and poured concrete to secure the HVAC system before it gets buried. By the end of the week it was back to chiseling into the backfill in another room, shoveling it into the wheelbarrow and then hauling it outside. I'm learning tons of Mexican Spanish in the process, which I'm noticing has tons of Aztec words in it. Also, it's very slang oriented, so my school-taught European Spanish is getting a real workout...one small example: owl in Spanish is 'Buho' but that's not what they say around here. They use the Aztec word 'Tecolote,' for which one of the mountains right outside of Las Vegas is named. This is not to be confused with 'Tecolotito,' which means little owl and is another place around here. Also, they seem to have a real sense of humor in their words, too. The official name for a backhoe is 'Retroexcavadora(literally backwards-excavator),' but no one calls it that. Everyone, and I mean everyone, uses the much looser 'Mano de Changa,' or monkey hand! My work buddy seems to be just as much of a history and language geek as I am, and we spend our breaks talking about the Civil War, the Mexican-American War, WWI & WWII, as well as all the differences between European and Mexican Spanish. The work is backbreaking, and deafening at times, but the companionship is great and my Spanish slang is growing astronomically...I even cursed a blue streak in Spanish the other day when my phone battery died on me!

As for the pictures this week, I start with a re-worked version of the scorpion that we had in the tub a few weeks ago...this time turned into a mosaic. Then, each of the Vizslas shot Old Timey-style! Next, three shots of Annie, one of the Mamas of the horses and one of the more elusive ones. Next, a couple of shots of Erin cleaning up around the house. Then, five landscapes: two cactus studies; a dark cloud at feeding time; Kim's fountain in the evening and another plant study. I end with a whimsical version of a selfie and then tonight's Creepy-Crawlie of the week!

Please, check the website out to sign up for our mailing list as we're about to discontinue sending them directly to you. Also, Erin has some new products available in the store. Just head to: https://www.newmexicoranchlife.com/

Take care everyone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basaseachic_Falls_National_Park

Basaseachic Falls National Park is a national park located in the western side of the state of Chihuahua in the heart of the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range. The park is named after Basaseachic Falls (Cascada de Basaseachic) the second tallest waterfall in Mexico with a height of 246 meters (853 ft).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mennonites_in_Mexico
Mennonites in Mexico - Wikipedia

History Background. The ancestors of the vast majority of Mexican Mennonites settled in the Russian Empire in the late 18th and 19th centuries, coming from the Vistula delta in West Prussia.Even though these Mennonites are Dutch and Prussian by ancestry, language and custom, they are generally called Russian Mennonites, Russland-Mennoniten in German. In the years after 1873, some 7,000 left ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mennonites
Mennonites - Wikipedia

The early history of the Mennonites starts with the Anabaptists in the German and Dutch-speaking parts of central Europe. The German term is "Täufer" or "Wiedertäufer" ("Again-Baptists" or "Anabaptists" using the Greek ana ["again"]).These forerunners of modern Mennonites were part of the Protestant Reformation, a broad reaction against the practices and theology of the Roman Catholic Church.

Take care everyone.