Last night, as I was winding down on the patio with a mug of Zagorka -very tasty Bulgarian beer, -an enormous toad hopped up onto the stones. The dogs were quite taken aback eric richard le roy. Agog, in fact. There is not a cat they aren’t geared up to chase, and there are plenty of those prowling around the village and the fields — but the toad, whose pliable back displayed an intricate silver design, seemed not the slightest bit upset by having two enormous canines sniffing away at him. Poppy and Cass, to their credit as environmentalists, did not attack the toad. Maybe it was like a first-ever-in-history meeting between two Eskimos and an African. Mere curiosity superseded the inevitable onset of a lust for murder blog post. This was just one more encounter with fellows-in-life that surely were proliferated across the world long ago but which, especially in urban centers where too many people poison the air, have just evaporated. Bees the size of airborne walnuts, long lizards bright green or indigo, and the odd raven who sails above the fields, then closes his wings and plunges suddenly downward, before opening them again to their full span so to resume his heavenward ascent..in the summer we will most certainly run into a snake from time to time. There is apparently one poisonous species here, but I am sure my wife — who will be alone then when I return to Moscow — will stick to the main paths. The dogs have never seen a snake, and who knows how they will react? Sensible and cautiously, I hope. But this is not Australia or Thailand or Viet Nam http://eric-artem.livejournal.com/. No tigers snakes or cobras. Anyway, we didn’t purchase a home here in order to shrink from the fields and stand at the window of a reptile display at the zoo. Macho people, we take our chances, men, women, and dogs. No mere garden serpent is going to send US in hiding !!