This week, I am in Dallas, Texas for the National RWA Conference. If you’d like real-time updates on the writing conference, please check out the Manuscript Mavens blog, where all four of us will be posting updates all week, throughout the day, to share our thoughts, impressions, and ah-ha moments with you.

In the meantime, I’ll be sharing a few of my Costa Rica photos with you here on this blog. (Link: my Costa Rica Thursday Thirteen post)

Today’s Costa Rica photo theme is: CREEPY CRAWLIES.

Just for those of you arachophobes, here is a lovely spider we found crawling up the wall.


Here’s a bat-covered ceiling at the Venado caves. See those holes above? They’re a few feet deep, and are created by the bats, who apparently secret some kind of oil in their sweat that eats away at the cave’s surface while they hang upside-down.


As I was walking back home from the neighbor’s farm, I ran into a snake on the path.. I was unsure whether this was a true coral snake or one of its cleverly disguised non-poisonous brethren. I later learned you can identify the more dangerous coral snake by its stripe pattern. If the colors spell RANA (rojo, amarillo, negro, amarillo) you should run away screaming. If not, no worries. As it turns out, this one *does* have the red, yellow, black, yellow pattern, and I maybe shouldn’t have followed it down the road, snapping photos in my shorts and flip flops.


Some neighbors found an even bigger prize and brought it over for our viewing pleasure. Here’s a lovely boa constrictor, stretched out in the grass.