El Chinche Picuda!

Wednesday afternoon, I walk over to the office to sign out, in a bit of a hurry because I had missed the bus the day before. When I got over there, though, I saw all of my housemates, including those in the 3 apartments connected to mine having a bit of a discussion. I walk over to find out what's going on. Turns out Megan had had some termites in her apartment, so the exterminator had come that afternoon to take care of them. In the process, he found in her ceiling at least six chinche picudas (chinches picudas... chinches picuda? not exactly sure how to pluralize things in spanish yet). Now, if you've never heard of this bug before, you're not the only one. But almost every Honduran we mentioned it to warned us that Megan dare not sleep in her apartment that night and highly recommended that all six of us get out. So, being that we had Bertha with us, she decided we should go to Pamela, one of the top administrators, and see if she could get us a hotel room for the night. We told her the situation and instead of getting us a hotel, she told us we could stay at her mom, Doña Bertha's house for the night and they would fumigate out entire house the following morning. Doña Bertha, who is THE owner/director of our school, is in Mexico for the month, and boy does she have a NICE house. So the six of us, Megan, Melissa, Bertha T, Anna, Corrie and I went out for some Chinese food dinner and then to DB's house. It is a very nice house, but there weren't enough beds so I ended up on the futon that had no mattress... it had little couch cushion things, but not comfortable at all. Not the best night's sleep, but I do have the privilege of saying that I have spent the night at Doña Bertha's house, so I'm not complaining.

Whoa... sidetracked, this was supposed to be about the chinches. Chinche picudas are a black and yellow bugs that are about an inch and a half long and carry a parasite called chagas, which apparently if you get bitten, it releases the chagas into your muscle where it grows and eventually can cause heart problems if not treated. And the ones that were in Megans ceiling were apparently dead already for who knows how long. But when we heard the story, it went something like this: Megan has chinche picudas in her house, if you get bitten, it stops your heart. Thankfully though, we were not in as much danger as we originally thought, and we survived our two daysaway from home and our now safe and sound back in the recently fumigated green house, about to head out for a green house dinner at chili's. I will post pictures later, cause I have to go right now. Thanks for reading, feel free to respond.