One of the things that surprises me about Piers is that he doesn’t kill pests. (I think it runs in his family.)

Everyone else I know would kill ants, cockroaches, flies or any unidentified creepy crawlies without a thought, by any means available (swatting, squishing, flushing down toilet, insecticide spraying, poisoning, burning).

Piers would rescue them.

Now, don’t get the wrong idea. He doesn’t like insects, especially in his home, but he will not kill them. He will capture them in a box and then set them free outdoors.

When we were at the villa in Mallorca, he offered biscuits to a trail of ants, and later helped them courier a dead wasp to their home.

 

Piers’ good deed for the day

 

The ants were about four feet away from home when he found them trying to cart their treasure along, but they were so slow and it would have taken them hours, so Piers just picked up the wasp and dropped it right at their doorstep, causing the carrying ants to get into a frenzy when their luggage vanished before their eyes.

The worker ants at the door quickly radioed for help and, soon, a whole bunch of them came to help drag the wasp through their doorway.

I think Piers has some kind of strange affinity with creatures. Not just insects, but also animals. He has a talent for spotting things. He’s always doing it and pointing them out to whomever’s around.

 

Spotted at a hill path to Bournemouth Beach.

 

In Mallorca, he spotted one silverfish, one ladybird, two praying mantids separately, a giant queen ant, a hummingbird, the first bat that flew across our villa, and two goats camouflaged on a mountain.

 

Ladybird finding refuge on his sleeve.

 

Praying mantis in a corner by the ceiling on the balcony of the villa.

 

He also rescued a bee who fell into our Coke can while trying to drink our Coke.

In comparison, I spotted only one baby cockroach who liked to use our bathroom in the villa in the middle of the night.

The goat spotting was really something else.

We were lying by the pool, reading, when he suddenly said, “Did you hear that?”

“No,” I said.

“Sounded like a goat,” he said.

I listened and heard nothing.

He listened some more, then ran off. I continued reading.

Fifteen minutes later, he ran back excitedly to tell everyone that he had spotted a small goat on the mountain behind the villa.

 

The goat was somewhere halfway up the mountain.

 

It was a bit hard to spot because the goats (we later discovered there were two) kept hiding behind tall grass and bushes, only walking out into view occasionally.

And they were really far away, so I had to max out the optical zoom on my camera (12x) to get a barely discernable image of them.

 

Goat moving through tall grass.

 

Goat looking straight at us!

 

Several months ago (I was in Singapore at that time) Piers was trying to fix his washing machine when he discovered a giant scary brown spider at the back of the machine.

He caught it in a disposable plastic container, took a photo of it, then set it free outside his apartment.

I looked at the photo and spent 15 minutes on Google trying to discover its breed to find out whether it’s deadly. Turned out it was a rustic wolf spider. Non fatal to humans but could potentially kill a dog.

Personally, I would want something scary like that dead if it’s living anywhere near me, but at the same time I respect Piers’ non-killing policy.

I suppose it doesn’t really matter too much. All that matters is that he does all the bug catching so I don’t have to.