Lately I’ve been sitting on my deck, sipping a pale ale or staring at the waves or the stars or the chicks playing volleyball or whatever else I happen to be doing at the time and then, out of nowhere, a skunk runs over my feet. A family of skunks apparently moved into my house without permission. This is no bueno.

The main problem here is that I hate skunks, especially how they smell when they spray their skunkiness, and I’m worried that one of these days that little critter is going to blast me with it’s skank. Or worse, start cruising into the restaurant downstairs and spray someone down there. Living on the beach surrounded by the zona verde means that we get all kinds of wildlife wandering into the surf camp compound, and thats totally cool. Snakes, raccoons, parrots, monkeys, armadillos, even crocodiles. But fuck those skunks!

So, about a week ago, we started  a search for a boa constrictor that could live in the floorboards and be on skunk patrol. In a country filled with snakes, its amazing how difficult it is to actually find one when you want one. But we can all thank Berny Chavarria, the care tender of our finca in Alemania, for coming through for us and finding a boa on the farm. It isn’t huge, but it will grow bigger as it eats more and more. Another example of how mother nature is fantastic.

Right now, as I write this blog, I can hear a skunk in the floorboards of my office, letting out little skunk squeaks to his little skunk friends. I’m willing to bet he’s saying “holy shit guys, we gotta get out of here, a snake just moved into the neighborhood!”.

Maria Mendoza, Patrick McNulty, and myself, snapping a pic with our new pet Sam the snake, right before we let him go into the floorboards to do his job. Good luck Sam, I declare a skunk war!