Commode Collecting

[Dr. James Adams]

Woody wrote:

>Commode fauna in Costa Rica does indeed set a high standard. I have had wood
>rats swimming in the bowl (at least we had running water), lizards of a genus
>I forget scrambling across the plastic skylight, cockroaches, army ants, many
>moths, and sand flies (no butterflies, though, which is what I was there for).
>A former occupant of the house had had a large and I guess unidentified rodent
>poke its head up through a big hole in the floor (new floor since!).

Costa Rica was one of the places I was initially thinking about when the 
bathroom thread started.  IN 1979 I visited Costa Rica for the first time 
with my family.  We were sitting in an outside restaurant in Liberia, 
Guanacaste (NW part of the country) in the evening.  As the sun went down, 
an Owl Butterfly (Caligo memnon, I think) flew into the restaurant, 
attracted to the lights.  First Caligo I'd ever seen.  I jumped up out of 
my seat and yelled "It's an Owl!", much to the amusement (?) of the other 
restaurant goers.  What's this got to do with bathrooms, you ask?  Well, as 
is the case with many restrooms in Costa Rica (and rest areas in Texas, but 
that's another set of stories yet to come) they are often open on 
top.  This Owl Butterfly flew around the restaurant a little and ended up 
disappearing into the men's restroom (fortunately).  Something else about 
Costa Rican restrooms (at least in 1979) -- many stalls have no doors.  I 
quickly entered the restroom and started checking stalls, much to the 
chagrin of the people in the first two stalls I looked in.  Thankfully, the 
butterfly had ended up on the side of an empty stall, and I was able to 
catch it with my fingers.  The rest of my family thought it was a pretty 
cool thing when I showed it to them back at the table.  My mom thought 
she'd better check the woman's restroom, and, surprisingly enough, there 
was one in there, so she had the thrill of bathroom discovery as well!

>I miss the place.

Ditto.


James K. Adams
Phone: (706)272-4427
FAX:  (706)272-2235
Visit the Georgia Lepidoptera Website:
    www.daltonstate.edu/galeps/


 
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