Here I am, celebrating another birthday in Uruguay.  It's just the two of us today, so we escaped to one of the restaurants overlooking the port in Punta del Este.  We sat by the window and birds kept coming up to beg for bread crumbs!  I am not a close-up bird lover.  I like the feathered creatures to stay in their spots up in the sky and up in trees, but NOT close to me.  I finally settled down and took the opportunity to snap some photos instead of being a scaredy-cat.
   My husband had no qualms about feeding them and even got one to eat out of his hand.  Traitor!  
   I had the polenta with shrimp and it was delicious!!  Hubby had the lamb chops (pictured), which were ever so good too.  Sometimes quiet birthdays are the best - spent with birds and boats.

   Ugh!!!  BUGS!  I don't mind a spider, after all I've read Charlotte's Web a zillion times to my third grade students and cried every single time that Charlotte died. (Sorry - no spoiler alert!)  However, I draw the line at some destructive garden bugs - like these aptly named leafy-footed stinkers.  They have a gelatinous glow as orange and black babies, then grow into an evil looking monster.  
   Yes - monster.  I'm not mean-spirited, but these insects are like vampires to your tomatoes.  They suck the life right out of a tomato and you don't even know it until you cut the tomato open.  Yuck!  I'm not sure why they're called "stinkers" as I've killed my fair share and never smelled a thing.
   The only way I've found to murder them is to spray vinegar on them and their nests.  Eventually they die.  However, they do lay eggs in the soil and will come back the next year if you don't treat the soil while it's resting (i.e. no plants or the vinegar will kill them).
   Next time you want to give someone a nightmare, show them these photos...then run!