PART 5 - THE FLYING TREE GECKO and THE FLYING FOX

a sudden shadow flit. yes! something was at the trunk of my guava tree as i gazed up from my supine postion on the swing.

i got up and went to look at the upright strong brownish trunk. aye.....nothing leh..why??? wait!! what's that white flashing little triangle thing??....

i observed closely....yes!! there was something there. a big gecko...a big brown lizard fleshing its white little triangular piece of skin from its throat.

up i climbed....silently and stealthly....i grabbed its tail and swooshed down to the ground.

i just caught a lizard with wings!! A FLY GECKO!!

it started to wriggle in frenzy.......i was a bit startled and unsure whether it would bite or not so in a quick swing i flung it away...

it was a beautiful manouvre. it sort of 'fly'....gliding gracefully upwards to the guava trunk.....and quickly crawling upwards until i lost sight of it.....

everyday i would lay on my swing and look up for the graceful gliding flying gecko. i din disturb it anymore and treat it as my new found weird pet. the one that was almost held in captivity by me.......;9)

i decided not to disturb it as i had no idea how was i going to keep it. it needs to fly and glide. i also din no what kind of foods it should be feeding on....so the best thing was to leave it alone to fly around my guava tree......;9)

night fall, it was the super guava season. one just needed to look up and u would see the whole tree laden with yummy big fruits...yum yum......not not yum yum for long......

shadowy flitting creatures came in brood to land on my guava tree. they were squeaking. i grabbed my torchlight and shined at them.....guess what i saw?..........

to be cont'd.......

THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE IS still FREE OF CHARGE...

the majestic of a sunrise symbolises new day...new hope...new life....new expectation.....

THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE IS FREE...

THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE IS FREE...
the fresh crisp morning air...the beautiful azure clear blue sky..the wondrous majestic rainbow after a drizzle....the cooling rains after a spell of sizzling heat.....
the warm smile of a total stranger...and the charity of the lost $5....
they are priceless!....very sadly, not many can see it. most take it for granted and even ignore all this miraculous natural occurences.....sad....;9(
so from today, let's enjoy all these god's wonders....and set free the bond that binds ur heart...let us regain the compassion within us that was lost along the way when we were distracted by the avarice of material gains and wealth.....
these are the wealth even the poorest possesses and no one ...not even the paps can take that away...
THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE IS STILL AND TRULY FREE OF CHARGE!

PART 5: WHERE THE INSECTS STICK AND THE GECKO FLIES

my next weird pet - STICK INSECTS and FLYING LIZARD

PART 5: WHERE THE INSECTS STICK AND THE GECKO FLIES

my monster pink guava tree never failed to delight me with a hosts of surprises.

i just bucked up my courage and tried to climb it. as i was climbing, manouvering the branches with my limps, i chanced upon a funny looking stick.

i thought i saw it moved. when i paused to observe, it was motionless. then i looked closely. it appeared to be an elongated insect. IT'S A BROWN STICK INSECT!

wow!! i was thrilled. further up above me, i noticed there were another few moving sticks.

goodie!....i descended. ran into the kitchen. searched for a plastic bag and a rubber band to tie. and hurriedly climbed up the branch again to catch all the stick insects.

my grandma told me stick insects loved guava leaves. no problem. i got a whole monster tree.

i reared my stick insects in a empty aquarium and place daily fresh twigs of guava leaves for them to feed...such fun to see the slow knotty movement of the insects.

if u startled them, they just freeze and really looked like a twig from the guava branch.....;9)

one day, i was sitting on my swing in my big garden compound with the guava shading over it. i slept on the swing looking up...

ZOOM! Something just flitted across one branch to another....I though it was a fluttering of the leaves shadow...but no! there it went again - and not flick...there was something just glide over....

to be cont'd...

PART 5: SPIDERS FEEDING TIME...

After we had witnessed the FUCK SPIDER, i will now narrate about how to feed the spiders....
as everyone knows, the old days kampong was infested with mozzies...big monster sized ones. if u got bitten, it would be one big itchy lump on ur skin....;9(
funny though like no one ever died of dengue fever in my kampong even though mozzies were festering!
this was how we fed the spiders. peeleepian and me would go to the most mozzies infested area. we stood still there with a plastic bag tied to ur trousers.
the mozzies would come to feast on us. usually we went about topless. so i would observe peeleepian skin; he on me.
once a mozzie landed on either of us and started sucking our blood. we tolerated and let the insect swelled up its body. then controlling our strength, we smacked onto the insect. we didn't kill it. we just knocked it out. it was still alive...maybe just stunned.
then we would peel off the wings rendering it flightless and put it into our plastic bag and headed back home to our pet spiders.
we would then let it out and put a wingless mozzie on the matchbox top. the hungry spiders would pranced, posed and then steady itself taking accurate aim, it would pounce on the wriggly blood fattened up mozzie.
that would be its meal for the day.
oh yes, we also fed our spiders with out spittle, too. usually after we sucked on a sweet, we spat a tiny globulus of sweetened spittle and released our pet spiders.
it would love our spittle and fester on it quite motionless like enjoying every drop of it......;9)
gross?....come to think of it....PRETTY GROSS!...hahahaha.....;9)
- end of fighting and fucking spiders.....;9)

PART 4: LET'S PLAY FIGHTING SPIDERS

cousin peeleepian was one hell of a guy. he liked got built in spiders sensor. he knew where it would be hiding.
we must be very slow and cautious when trying to catch this illusive iridescent jumping fighting spiders which were quite small and black with bluish green shiny stripes. what a beauty they were!
it lived in between 2 blades of leaves. peeleepian would stoop down to see if there was the arachid dwelling in between 2 leaf blades. once he was sure there was one inside there, he would clasp both his palm gently over the blades and in a swift move, snapped the whole branch and quickly put the who thing in the transparent plastic bag that we brought lest the spider would just jump off into the forested floor and be lost!.
we were looking for the slimmer body male spider. only the male fights. the females breed and are bigger with a rounder abdomen and smaller frontal pincers pair of legs.
i loved to rear and keep the female cos it was cuter and ...i dunno...appeared to be friendlier and easily trained....
YES I TRAINED THOSE FIGHTING SPIDERS....lol!
after we had caught enough...and it was tedious work actually. it was difficult to allocate the hideout of these spiders, u know. we would happily return home to "train" our pet spiders.......;9)
i would put the male one into the empty match box lined with a blade of leaf. it would willingly jump in and then hide under the leaf.
for the female, i put it in a jar and place more leaves inside cos the female might breed.
if we noticed the female had bigger swollen abdomen, this mean that she was loaded with eggs. we would mate her with the male spider.
this was a very weird process cos if u leave the female and the male alone, they would fight instead of mate. and this was what we would do.
first, the female spider was let out onto the matchbox. then i would gently press on her abdomen. she would be render quite motionless except her head would be exposed.
then cousin peelepian would let our the male spider onto the matchbox top. the male spider then would start doing a very funny 'spider dance' with out stretched frontal longer legs. it would vibrate its pair of legs and slowly approach the immobilised female and the legs would dig into her thorax quivering and quivering......this mean that mating had already taken place.
after the male deposited his cum into the fat female and lost interest, peelepian would return it into the matchbox. i would release the female spider and returned her to her glass jar.
within days, she would be weaving a cocoon and laying her eggs....and soon u find many tiny spiders hatching.
at this stage, it would be appropriate to release all the baby spiders and the female mother to the wild....u see how we preserved those spiders even at our tender age, we were already practising conservation......;9)
as for the male, well, once a while, we would let 2 males hop onto the matchbox top and they would fight it out.....very interesting sight. they would use their front pair of legs to push each other. the loser would let go and run away.
do u know what we use to feed the spiders?
.......to be cont'd......

PART 3: FIGHTING SPIDERS....AND FUCK SPIDERS.

more pets to come....;9)

For those who dunno where the term FUCK SPIDERS come from...well, read this and u may know it's originality....hahahahah.....;9)
cousin peeleepian and i were the best childhood pals. not only he was my cousin, he was liked tarzan. he was my idol, u know. he feared nothing. whatever creepies crawlies, critters, yucking things...etc...he grabbed!
he influenced me greatly...so i also grabbed what ever things that crawled, swam, flew or bite.
like i said before, we were simple kampong kids. poor but happy. we got not many toys to play with as our parents were poor then. but we were very courageous and creative .
peeleepian always would bring me to mt faber area to catch spider. under the hill, used to live a sinewy old malay man. he had a small plot of land there where he grew rambutan and planted tapioca and sweet potatoes.
yum...yum....we would always time the ripening so that we could steal some of pak awang's harvest...hahahaha...;9)
pak awang as a nasty old fuck! he would scream at us when he found us digging up the his tapiocas or sweet potatoes.
it was a good thing he was a limp. if not we would not be able to escape him so easily with all the loots......;9)
in my old kampong house was a large compound where grandma since young had grown a guava tree. this wonderful pink fruit tree had since grown old with my my grandma. it was monstrous and majestic not only providing the family with much need shade but vit C rich pink guavas. the fruits were abundant. i never passed a day without eating a couple of those seedy sweet guavas. it was like my daily staple of fruits too.....;9)
my pink guava tree also attracted many different kinds of colorful and rare birds....yellow merobok, the sweet singing merobok, parrots, thrushes, etc....and once even the rare hornbills...no joke!
these hornbills were scary bird...so large and with the monstrous yellow curved beak. the pair which frequently my guave tree really looked menancingly threatening.
so as it was ....kampong days passed by so relaxed and not a dull moment.
peelepian would visit me almost everyday to climb the guava tree and pluck the ripe fruits. he could pluck so many at one go, we even had many spares to distribute to my favorite neighbour next door, ah eng. this hardworking girl helped my mum to look after all my tender siblings....
(ah eng had since passed away a few years back. she was inflicted with lung cancer after years of working in the petrol kiosk. she was barely 50 then....sob...sad....;9(
granny would want me to pluck those overly ripen fruits. i shuddered when she chomped into it with her quite toothless mouth. do u know why?
over riped fruits contained tiny squiggling maggots. it wrrigled frantically when u broke open the riped soft yellow fruit that exposed it's pink flesh...and *yucks!*..those wriggling maggots..
granny said those were the sweetest with the maggots. she even assured us it was ok to devour the fruits with those tiny white worms....*yucks!*...no thanks gran...u can have all the wormy fruits to ur delights!
while peeleepian climbed the tree, i would fix 2 lengths of tied bamboo poles extending the lengths as to hit down any high up good size guava.
my brother and sisters would also join in the fun and picked the fallen fruits....2 joined extended bamboo poles were really heavy to handle.....so only me being the eldest of the brood was strong enough to held it.
it was really really fun....what next to do was to wash the fruits and supped!........;9)
next, peeleepian would bring me to mt faber. this time we armed with empty match boxes and plastic bags again.
we were going to catch those iridescent bluish green jumping fighting spiders.....
to be cont'd........