No Animals!?!

Hi Monkey,

One thing that is weird about living here at the Embassy is that there are almost no animals to see at all.
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There are some birds.  There are brown ones that look very much like the little brown birds that we have in Virginia.  They like to sit on the ground in the shade when the sun gets hot.  There are pigeons, which I think might be the same all over the world.  There are big black ones with white wings, that might be like crows, but they don't come close enough to tell.
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There are LOTS of bats.  They come out at night and swoop around and eat the bugs.  I love to watch them fly.  It is very cool.  The picture is one that someone else took at another place in Iraq but they are bats from Iraq, so I thought you'd like it.
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There are a couple of stray cats that somehow get on to the compound.
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There are some working dogs that help us stay safe.
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And there are a few lizards that you can see sometimes if you are looking very carefully.  They are small and brown, so they are really hard to see.
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Love you like an animal,
Dad