Other Wildlife

One problem that we have in Mussoorie is stray dogs. When we first arrived, everyone warned us not to pet them because they probably had rabies. Lately, though, we've been seeing a lot of puppies. The other day one followed Beth up the hill from the school gate. It was very cute and Beth was quite sure that it wanted us to adopt it. Unfortunately for Puppyji (as he had been named), Dave was not quite ready for that responsibility. We heard it once the next day outside our door, but it hasn't been back since.

Periodically we have other guests in our house that are even more unwelcome. The spiders here in the Himalayas grow quite large. The one below showed up the other morning in our bedroom.

Later it, or its relative, arrived next to our couch. You can see it below next to a standard 1 liter water bottle for scale.

In order for us to be comfortable while watching TV, we needed to get rid of this giant spider. You can see the lengths that we went to in order to rid our home of this probably harmless visitor. We had to take our couch apart and it took several minutes of work, but it was worth it.

When you come and visit us here in India, we'll make sure to sweep for spiders and puppies before you get here.

Dave and Beth