Life On the Border Was Scary; But Not For the Reason You Think

For just over a year, I lived on the US/Mexico border alone, and it was one of the hardest years of my adult life. In 2019, news of immigrants flooding the border was everywhere, and strangers routinely asked if I had to carry a gun (no). 

I could see Mexico from my house, but I wasn’t scared for my life–I mean, I had wifi–but the thing that gave me the most cause for concern was something I didn’t even know existed until the day I arrived at my new house. 

I did meet several immigrants crossing the border while I lived there; they were my patients in the ambulance, where I was an EMT part-time.

I had the best Spanish on my crew, and my Spanish is really bad, so I felt even worse for the immigrants. I mostly treated scared and tired (and soon to be confused because of my Spanish) women and little kids.

There wasn’t much to be afraid of there. 

The sheer volume of wildlife I encountered just around my house (and sometimes inside the house) was staggering.

I’ve lived in some of the busiest national parks in the country, and I’ve never lived in a place where I wanted the animals to give me more space. 

The javelinas (Pecari tajacu) in the neighborhood definitely frightened me at first. Their babies were darling; they looked like big russet potatoes with legs, but they had hate in their hearts.

They had a wallow under my bedroom window and weren’t afraid to run right at me.  

The scorpions were also a bit hard to get used to, but eventually, I felt blasé about them too. In fact, when I finally moved, I hid a few dead ones for the next occupant of my house to discover.

I didn’t want to deny them that right of passage. 

The variety of snakes I saw in my carport alone was stunning.

There was, of course, the rattlesnake. But there was also a snake so tiny he was like a silver shoelace, and he had gotten stuck by the tail on a spiderweb fiber until I karate chopped him loose.

A pair of barn swallows also chose to call my carport home, and they were filthy, but I allowed them to stay because they acted like sentinels. One evening I heard them going crazy outside, and when I opened the door, I was greeted by an enormous red coachwhip snake, standing itself four feet straight up in the air, trying to reach the swallow’s nest.

Another time I heard my sentinels signaling to see a tarantula the size of my face (later named Aragog) crossing the carport ceiling, also in the direction of the nest. Those poor birds were never bored. 

One member of the local wildlife, the one I remained fearful of the entire time I lived there, one not much bigger than a dime, was the conenose bug.

I didn’t know anything about conenose bugs until I got a flyer in my welcome packet, and man, did I feel welcomed.

Conenose bugs, or kissing bugs, only come out at night and are attracted to the CO2 you breathe. They bite you near your mouth or eyes to consume a blood meal (gross) and then–wait for it–poop right on your face while they’re doing it (NASTY).

Inside the poop is a parasite that carries Chagas disease, which in its most severe form can cause fatal heart inflammation. For this reason, I slept under a bed net every night, which happily kept the scorpions out (yay). 

Truthfully, deaths from Chagas disease are rare, but they do happen.

And you should fear the conenose because they’re marching northward, and ain’t no border wall gonna stop them.

The family of kissing bugs that carries Chagas disease typically inhabit tropical climates, but because of both climate change and human migration into urban areas (and no, I don’t mean from immigrants), their distribution is trending into North America.

In 2018 the CDC identified a conenose bug that had bitten a young girl in Delaware. Thankfully, the girl was fine, but if you need another existential threat to add to your list, go ahead and add a blood-sucking insect that poops on your face at night and makes your heart explode.  

(Thanks, nature!)