The Bug Zapper
Not many people who lived in the valley where the Saó Jorge dos Orgaós research station was positioned had electric energy. Actually, it can be accurate to say that the one individuals who had electric energy have been the people who lived or worked in services that have been a part of that research advanced of the Republic of Cape Verde. As expatriates who were privileged to stay on-station and benefit from the day by day sight of the small butte shaped like an organ pipe, for which the locale was named, the Footloose Forester and his Bengal Tiger spouse enjoyed the amenities that had been possible with the electric energy that was supplied by the German technical assistance agency, now known as Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, or GIZ, to the Republic of Cape Verde. The Germans had installed a generator and housed it in a shed, laid electric lines to numerous barns, laboratories, and to employees residences. We occupied one of those residence facilities. Our quaint little four-room home was, in turn, financed by our personal American help company, The Agency for International Development.
When it was nearing completion, electric lines were extended to it and were powered up. The furnishings and the appliances within the little home have been fundamental but a lot appreciated. We had one of many very few microwave ovens in the whole nation, and we had a spacious refrigerator electric bug zapper to maintain leftover meals chilly out of attain from the swarms of ants and flying insects that visited our idyllic island paradise close to the onset of the monsoon season annually. The monsoon season in semi-arid Cape Verde is perhaps not what folks at house imagined it to be. One year it rained only thrice, and only two times the next 12 months. Nevertheless, the swarms of flying insects that awaited the onset of the rains made their presence identified in a quick interval of some weeks when the skies started to cloud up and the humidity started to rise. We knew after they made their presence identified as a result of they visited our modest house in their 1000's.
Hence the necessity for a bug zapper-an electric bug zapper. When early night came and the flying insects begin to appear, the Bengal Tiger plugged in the electric bug zapper. There was a cacophony of zap, zap, zap as they congregated and succumbed to the fatal vibrant lights of the zapper. In the morning, we needed to disconnect the zapper and clean out the elements in anticipation of the following round of night zapping. Having electricity was not taken for granted, and our zapper made it a bit more snug. The always considerate and inventive Bengal Tiger had another activity in mind for our electric energy capabilities. When a huge rat decided to make his (or her) nest in the insulating materials in the again of the refrigerator, she devised a method to make the rat unwelcome. Somehow or other, she bared an electric line and attached it to the again of the frig. When the rat crawled into the insulation, mentioned rat was electrocuted into the afterlife. Because it turned out, the Bengal Tiger additionally managed to, and at the identical time, brief out the whole electric grid in the valley.
