Mario’s Stuff

Bug Update

A couple of nights ago, I was in the kitchen with Shawna enjoying a glass of wine and chatting. We had the lighting low for ‘mood’ and our dog Indio was fast asleep on the floor between the refrigerator (his temple of worship) and the table where we were sat. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed something scuttling along the kitchen floor, about 8 inches away from Indio, and to my horror (and now exasperation) it was another f@#*!=g scorpion! >:-/ I jumped up, nearly knocking the table and wine everywhere and tried to move Indio away. Because he was asleep, he woke up startled and walked backwards to where the scorpion was and almost stood on it… Seriously, he missed it by millimeters… I grabbed Shawna’s flipflop off her foot and battered it (sounds like a Monty Python-esque sketch), I then realized it was another bark scorpion and very poisonous. Had it stung Indio it could have killed him as the bark scorpion’s sting can be fatal in animals, children and the elderly/infirm.

View of the scorpion from above. (I’ve cleaned up most of the gore from the battering with Photoshop).

This is the view of the damn thing I had from where I was sitting…

Those of you who read the old blog will remember that we’ve had several scorpion encounters in this house, a bark scorpion was in one of the kitchen drawers last year and missed my hand by a hair’s width as I reached in for something. This latest scorpion is now the sixth we’ve encountered in the house and adjacent patio footpath in just twelve months. We have a bug guy (as do most people in Vegas) who comes out to the house and sprays inside and out, but pesticides only remove the food source of scorpions as they’re pretty much indestructible (except when they come up against ball-pane hammers and old flipflops ;-). They’re like the armoured tanks of the insect world!

As if scorpions weren’t bad enough, I photographed a brown recluse spider on our patio wall last month. The brown recluse is also known as the ‘Violin Spider’ as it has a violin shape on it’s head where it’s legs are attached. The brown recluse is one of the most poisonous spiders in America and it’s necrotic bite can result in a huge gaping hole of rotting flesh. Nasty stuff… Some poor people have had to have limbs amputated because of it. The spiders are quite small, about the size of a penny or nickel.

The small but dangerous brown recluse spider

I photographed another spider on the patio wall a few weeks ago (shown below) but  I’m not sure what it is. It looks like a hobo spider, but I think we’re a lttle too South Westerly for the hobo. If anyone can identify it then please let me know here.

The spider I can’t identify

I think we’re getting an unusual amount of spiders and scorpions here in the Southern Las Vegas area as new houses are being built further into the desert right by us and the insects are obviously moving this way. We can’t take any more risks with scorpions in the house with the baby and pets so we’re going to move to another area of Vegas as soon as we can…

Ethel M’s Cactus Garden

One of our favourite places to go for an afternoon stroll with the baby is Ethel M’s Chocolate Factory & Cactus Garden in Henderson. The garden is home to just about every kind of cactus there is, and kids love it as it’s next to Ethel M’s Chocolate Factory. Over the Christmas period, they light the garden up with literally thousands of lights, it looks like a bizarre desert version of Santa’s Grotto. We were there last week as the sun was going down, and I took a couple of photos for the blog with my cell phone.

Part of the Cactus Garden with barrel cacti and agave plants (where tequila comes from ;-)

Backlit cacti near the Chocolate Factory

After the Cactus Garden we went to the local mall, where Skye likes walking for miles whilst waving to everyone :-D

The Nigerian Barrister

We’ve all received the spam/con emails from so-called ‘barristers’, ‘doctors’, members of ‘Royalty’, ‘diplomats’ and even ‘Presidents’, all stemming from Nigeria and the like, but yesterday Shawna recieved the funniest email yet from a Nigerian ’barrister’ claiming to be in London with the hilarious made-up name of Dr. Fred Mike…!!!!!!!!  Can you believe this shit? We laughed all day at this one! These people must read internet pages with lists of English men’s names and then randomly choose two… How else could you come up with Fred Mike!!?? DR Fred Mike from Nigeria!!!! LOL :-D He was of course emailing us to let us know (very thoughtfully) that he had $20 million dollars in a special trust fund in London and just needed $900 of our money urgently to free it up and would of course compensate us “dearly for our kindness”… Hilarious stuff… We’ve decided that we’re going to call our next pet ‘Dr. Fred Mike’ :-D

Welcome to the new blog, I hope you like it’s new look (I prefer it to the old one).

The blog has been updated (along with the main website www.MarioParga.com) due to a change of web hosts. Most of the data transferred over ok, but some things, such as the old ‘News & Events’ page from the main site and the old Blog didn’t do too well… Sadly, all the old Blog and News entries in their original format from 2004 to present were lost in the process :-/ My web guy was able to save them in raw data, but I’d have to re-enter all the entries manually which would of course take forever… As it’s still early 2009, I’ve manually added the blog entries from the start of this year as the NAMM show entry was popular amongst you, as were the Vegas Guitars entries and Bug updates. If I ever get enough time I’ll try and add more of the older stuff.

The main website is slightly different, there’s a new ‘Mario Parga’ logo and the page layout has changed slightly. The Entranced subdomain has gone as it will eventually be integrated into another part of the website. The Guestbook has been removed as sadly it was under constant attack by spammers and we all got sick of having to moderate it. If anyone wants to write me or send a guestbook-type message then please use the contact form. Thank you :-)