I've been working in rural Florida this summer and have been impressed by the determination of all sorts of small creatures to get into my house. There are hordes of insects, frogs and geckos that congregate on the windows at night to look in at the light. A few frogs have made it in and I was once surprised to feel a frog jump onto my head while I was working at my desk. There is always one earwig in the shower, never more, never less. And a mouse, the smartest small creature here, took up residence in my kitchen, where I saw it licking my silverware clean late one night. I later opened an unused drawer and saw that the mouse had made its nest there out of some fluffy white material from who-knows-where. The mouse was home at the time and stayed perfectly still as we looked at each other-- it probably didn't know that the drawer could open, an unfortunate trait for a mouse house.
My car, parked in the shade outside, is apparently a mansion for small frogs. They settle under the hood by the windshield wipers and in the lining around the trunk. At least one has found its way to the interior, as I discovered while going 70 miles an hour on the interstate. It jumped onto my neck and I felt the cool moistness of its feet (distinct from the scratchy dryness of an insect) for a second before I spasmed it off and managed not to swerve out of my lane.
I had another instance of critter-caused distracted driving today, also on the interstate, when I reached down for my drink and felt a sudden sharp pain like a needle-prick. I was confused for a few seconds until I looked down and saw a large wasp that must have been trying to share my drink and had stung me on the palm. It was a real shock and the best I could do to react without crashing the car was to open all the windows and hope the wasp would fly out. Instead, it crawled up the dashboard and into an air vent, which I closed behind it. Now, I imagine that the wasp either made it out of the ventilation and is living happily ever after, or that it built a nest somewhere and I can expect dozens of wasps to come out of my air vents sometime in the near future.
This is why I work with plants: while they can have all sorts of thorns and poisons and irritating hairs, I've never had a plant jump on me in the car.
