Here kitty, kitty!

Viña or Valparaiso is the IT place where Santiagoans go to celebrate New Years.  The beach, the food, the 30-minute spectacular fireworks display on the Pacific coast, definitely a great place to welcome the new year.  Thus, this year, Pablo and I were kind of bummed that we had to stay in Santiago to house-sit.  With some friends who shared a great new year together, we awoke on the first morning of 2010 to find 7 little surprises!  Wait … who wanted to go to Viña for New Years again?

Tick attack!

Now, I’m not a bug fan but I have to admit I became rather curious about them when I found out that the jellybean sized bulbs I felt while scratching Pablo’s dogs were not tangled hair balls but little blood-sucking insects living on his pets.  They’re called ticks, and they are quite common here in Chile.  Let me tell you, for those of you who’ve never seen ticks before, they’re not as small as their name may suggest.  Take a look at the picture I took.  See those brown bugs?  Yes, those are ticks.  See the gray and tan bean-like things next to them?  Wish they were beans but, yep, those are ticks too.  They usually live outdoors and are commonly found with it’s head burrowed under the skin of outdoor pets (i.e. dogs).  It seems that the only way to get rid of them (without medicating the dogs) is to groom the dogs regularly and pick the ticks off of their skin with a tweezer and then burn them (the ticks, not the dogs).  Have I said too much?

Pablo giving Patotas and Rosita a shower.