That subtitle is a little pretentious. For a long time I have wanted to do a blog or maybe even a book draft about the immense variety that we see and experience from and on our veranda. So this is a rough draft.

This evening during dinner on our veranda Karin and I noticed a small salamander/gecko crawling down the wall between the light fixture and the shutter. It was an unusual orange/clear color with a wiggling tail that made it look like a large scorpion. (We have had small scorpions on our veranda.) We thought that was interesting but it soon disappeared somewhere.

Later as we were playing cards in the cool breeze we noticed two normal-colored grey salamanders crawling along the beam between the window and door--and between two light fixtures. Was one of them the earlier creature, having changed colors, or had these two chased the other off? Soon our attention was riveted to one of them stalking a moth over the door. As we watched carefully, with Karin getting a crook in her neck, we were rewarded with witnessing the salamander pounce, while on the bottom of the beam, and crawl away into a corner with the moth in his mouth. We applauded as the moth gave a death shudder.

To think I have always been appalled at accounts of crowds cheering and applauding at executions. Everything is relative, I am deciding.

Along that line I should mention that we have always warned people that they must be careful whenever moving any rocks in the garden or fields--scorpions live there. Imagine my surprise one day in moving a decorative rock on our veranda wall--a scorpion was there! O.K., if you lie down with rocks, what do you expect? But about a week later I dropped a peanut behind the bench cushion that I was sitting on. I lifted the cushion to retrieve the peanut but changed my mind when I saw a large scorpion (3-4 inches long) there. So the moral is: paradise is not as it seems.

July 2007 Update: We now have a small (6 inches including tail) lizard living at our front gate.
Also we think there may be a bat residing in a narrow crack between a beam and the wall of our veranda. We just love nature?

This summer we had some sail boats as well as the Club Med Yacht anchor nearby. See photos by going to our blog and searching veranda.
http://parosparadise.blogspot.com