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At 62.5cm, this paradise tree snake still had almost double its body length to grow. A victim of grass-cutting, it was found right outside the office and brought in by a colleague. I spent the better part of yesterday afternoon injecting and fixing it in formalin. It will join the ranks of my spirited collection as the first preserved reptile. To some, this might appear shoddy work I know, but I’ll learn…

One of my bosses was none too pleased, since I left a great stink of a rotting snake in his room - it used to be the wet lab, and in a way, it still is - when I first uncovered the lid of the container in which the snake was kept overnight. I made sure to make up for it and my unofficial activity by putting in extra hours of work time!

It feels as if our normal lives have been put on hiatus since the previous week. It is finally here, and we’re keeping the show running, fuelled by reserves of adrenaline.

Dad with toddler in arms walks over.

I do the usual “Hello, welcome to XXX!” and hand them a brochure.

The dad whispers something into the child’s ear.

The child reaches out and grabs the brochure.

Dad whispers something else.

Child says to me, “Hello.”

I respond in kind, “Hello!”

Dad whispers again.

Child goes, “Bye bye.”

I wave, “Bye bye!”

They walk off.

Colleague and I exchange quizzical looks.

* * * * *
Can’t do sales. And visitor services. At the end of a 6-hour shift, I just feel like slipping into some forgotten cave somewhere to recuperate. It takes me a few minutes to ‘learn the ropes’ and get myself up to speed with the events of the day, one hour to stumble around and make myself look like an idiot by turning to one of the ‘regulars’ whenever a difficult question is posed by a visitor, a couple of hours to work my Extroversion out of its shell, an hour for it to reach its peak performance period, the one hour during which I’d start to sound like a pro, and then after that, fatigue sets in and the ambient furniture music (Kevin Kern, I recognised it as) (that one CD has been on re-loop the whole day) lures a tired brain into auto-pilot. Funny thing is, I do enjoy it when the E has taken charge…

* * * * *
The Butterfly Garden was one of the more popular attractions, with visitors forming queues outside its entrance for a ‘tour’ in the aviary-style gardens that wouldn’t last past 10 minutes. Many were enthralled by the flying beauties, and there were all manner of poses with all models of camera-phones and cameras in there. My sis happened to be one of the visitors, and one of the Butterfly Garden staff attempted to enthuse some interest by asking her “do you know how caterpillars become butterflies?”.

At this point, I should mention that my sister is perhaps one of the most scientifically-adept youngsters of her age I have ever known, and has manage to not only sit through a rather technical talk by fly expert Patrick Grootaert but also formed a few educated questions and comments during the process. The topic of lepidopteran metamorphosis thus, would be to her as elementary as which alphabet comes before ‘B’.

From what I heard (from my parents, who recounted the story), my sis gave the poor staff a blank ‘duh’ look and her answer, loaded with sarcasm: “By magic.”

Summoned to the Fish’s desk with a “come to my table NOW!!! big spider”, I fetched an empty specimen tube and hopped across the hallway into the other room. I was expecting one of those huge jumpers, which constitute most of the S.O.S. cases around here. When I saw this one from afar, I promptly sprang back into my room to exchange the container for a bigger one.

It was a biggish, brownish spidey. Fat, furry spidey.

A mygalomorph!

Unlike the other large, brown, hairy spiders which are often mistaken by the layperson as tarantulas, this is the real deal, a spider from the family Theraphosidae. (The task of further classification - Phlogiellus sp.? Selenocosmia sp.? - is best left to the experts.)

She was crouched on the ground with her legs curled up against her body. Hardly active; lethargic, even, and unresponsive to the touch. It seemed, and as was the case, that her hours were numbered. A pity, for she was a beautiful creature, a sight sought after by many in the country, a representation of the celebrated yet little-known denizens of our wilder areas, living their lives in burrows, their biology still shrouded in mystery.

Even while on solid ground, I still feel as if I’m riding on gentle waves. Clocked up about 12 hours out at sea during the past three days - either at the helm (working towards a powerboat driving licence), getting my bum numbed on the crewseats, or trying to track and shoot terns with the ‘nuclear missile’ (it was an overkill).

Unfortunately, it was blue skies and scorching sun during the days of the practical lessons (I’ve tanned significantly), and grey sullen weather during the tern-shoot. I’ll definitely be back; yesterday was but a trial run!

Black-naped terns

We thought somebody died and was rotting in my boss’ room; the stink was unbearable. Pest control came by in the afternoon and extracted from the ceiling boards two dead mynah nestlings, which were all chirpy and very much alive the week before.

Sigh, the fragility of life… …

Saddening also, that we find these common birds blog-worthy only when they’re tragically dead.

I held the most remarkable of all living things, a creature of astounding abilities that elude our understanding, of extraordinary, even bizarre senses, of stamina and endurance far surpassing anything else in the animal world. Yet my captive measured a mere five inches in length and weighed less than half an ounce. I held that truly awesome enigma, a bird.

~ Fisher 1979

So tired! Pre-dawn waking mornings and an overnighter at Pulau Ubin. I wouldn’t miss this for the world… there’s so much to learn, about bird-ringing, bird behaviour, and everything about the avian types from the real experts. Something I wished to have been able to do since years ago, but never had the chance to. It’s been roasting hot days, and we’re out in the field for hours on end. The birds pinch and claw, the weaver ants bite, but it’s “all part of the game”. And it continues.

They’re everywhere in the office. On the stairs, in the doorway, the bathroom (and the shower in the bathroom), the pantry, the library, under my desk, and behind my chair - a most unstrategic location for any creature to be hanging around in…

… especially when it just so happens that I decide to stand up then. Now, standing up isn’t the problem. It’s the rolling back of my chair when I do so that brings disaster.

Yesterday I was treated to a most repugnant odour (whiffs of a likely mixture of idehydes, phenol, quinones, iodine, hydrogen cyanide, and chlorine) that forced me to evacuate the room for a few minutes. I returned with a damp piece of toilet towel tissue and wiped the offending trail of juice and remnants of the millipede off the floor and wheels of my chair.

I don’t know why these flat-backed or Polydesmid millipedes - many of us, oft mistakenly, refer to them as centipedes - keep coming. Might be the rain’s doing. But come indoors these ‘pedes do, to starve, get stepped on (accidentally, of course), die, and dry out, and get swept away. They live a miserable suicidal existence.

It struck me as weird, unfamiliar, that I was using my D200 to shoot intertidal scenes. Then I realised - that had never happened before. My last intertidal trip, to Changi, was more than two years ago… before I had acquired the D200. I was going through my old intertidal photos and the bulk of them were taken with the CoolPix 4500, including those from my favourite location and where I was first introduced to our wonderful shorelife - Pulau Sekudu, and that was in June 2003.

On Friday I finally had the opportunity to experience Cyrene, the infamous amphibious landing and all. It was the virgin trip for my D200, my new G10, and myself. I was excited, for Cyrene’s kicked up much fuss and much hype among the nature/marine community in Singapore. I’ve been wanting dearly to go on an intertidal, and Cyrene in particular, only that I kept missing my chances.

Cyrene Reef is an elusive nymph in our seas. A mysterious submerged reef in Singapore that is visible only at the lowest tides of the year. It doesn’t have a jetty and accessibility is rare. But it is also one of the biggest patch reef with magnificent and rare sea creatures found only at Cyrene!

- so says on the Facebook page dedicated to Cyrene.

Admittedly, I am very much a terrestrial animal. Not used to seaward travels, my perception of the world was still somewhat wobbly hours after I disembarked the boat. I feel rather directionless when I’m out there on the shores, not knowing where to look, or not knowing what I’m looking at is, or if there is indeed something out at my feet but I’m just not looking hard enough. The general taxonomic group I’d recognise - ie. holothurians/sea cucumbers, nudibranchs/sea slugs, etc., but that’s just as good as saying ‘coleoptera/beetle’, or ‘leipidoptera/butterfly’, which is hardly satisfying. I do try to read up, but there’s a lot to take in, and nothing beats experience in the field. Most of my then-existing knowledge of reef ecology from high school and undergrad days has been displaced. Next time, I’d know to tag along more closely with the sharp-eyed vets, whose photos I’d see when I’m back at home and go, “Oh, there was that there?!”

Despite my shore-going noobness, it’s not difficult to appreciate the beauty and fragility of it all. Located between Pulau Bukom and Jurong Island, the reef patch is surrounded on almost all sides by industrial islands, dredging works, shipping lanes… Any visitor to the reef would be amazed at the fact that there is anything there at all. Every single knobbly seastar I come across on Cyrene brings with it a consoling message: that there is still hope, that all is not lost even in seas of despair.

Photos:

• Cyrene on Zoto

Links:

• More about this trip on the Wildshores blog
• More about this trip on the Team Seagrass blog
• Blog posts on Cyrene on monkey’s blog
• Blog posts on Cyrene on budak’s blog here, here and here
• More posts on Cyrene via the Wildsingapore feeds

I returned home today and told my mom that I’d have to head straight to Bishan Park again tomorrow morning, and she commented that it feels as if lately I’m “日日好似去玩… 唔似番工”.

Well… there was the induction course for new staff last week, and it included visits to several places including Gardens by the Bay, and Sungei Buloh, where I ended up guiding my fellow inductees. Saturday was the usual Buloh affair, and Sunday was taking on a few volunteer trainees under the wingpaw. So that made three consecutive days at Buloh… and it’s a landscaping WSQ course these two days. It’s all rather fun, since aside from now I don’t think I’ll get to (or need to) operate a lawn mower or grass cutter, or use a hoe or a pruning saw or other such gardening tools ever again. My first time to Bishan Park; spotted three Dracos and had one pretty male in the hand.

Purple heron in the rain

Female changeable lizard

Cicada up close

A male Draco - one of the prettiest flying lizards I’ve seen

“Is humanity facing a looming ecological credit crunch?” - so asked Dr Chris Hails, Editor-in-Chief of the Living Planet Report and WWF-International Director of Network Relations, during his talk on Tuesday. A rhetorical question, no doubt, for the answer is a resounding yes.

He presented the findings of the Living Planet Report 2008, with an emphasis on the rather “worrying” trends gleamed from the Living Planet Index and our Ecological Footprint. Basically, that we are facing an ecological debt, that - in the economic terms for which a member of the audience made no efforts to hide his distaste - we are running out of capital, that demand is outstripping supply, that our consumption of natural resources is three times the rate of what the earth is able to sustain, and that humanity’s very existence (as well as that of all species) is being threatened.

The recommended solution? To use energy wedges:

Using a wedge approach (as pioneered by Pacala and Socolow in 2004)… moving to clean, efficient energy generation based on current technologies could allow us to meet the projected 2050 demand for energy services with major reductions in associated carbon emissions.
~ WWF, 2008

Calls for increased government regulatory intervention, cross-sector partnerships, it’s the same scripts everywhere. Same stories being replayed too: market failures, bureaucratic failures, the unreliability of social efficiency. So what’s new? What else can be new?

Woe betide any creature that finds itself ‘discovered’ on the walls of the office. A sharp poke with the business end of an umbrella and a gentle drop would land it on the floor, where it will then be coaxed into a jar, and be subjected to much scrutiny amongst the staff, who would then make it their day’s priority to have the identity of the animal, well… identified, right down to its species and sex. If it is a specimen of special interest or beauty, more homely quarters for it (by which time it would have the honour of being referred to as a he, or a she in this case… or so we deduce) would be sought.

If we keep wandering away from our desks these days, blame it on the pretty domestic huntsman (Heteropoda venatoria) which, despite some feeble protests from the plant-loving members of the office, has been newly-proclaimed as the office pet.

It’s been great at work so far. Although it’s only been two days, it feels like I’ve been here much longer - knowing some of the people helps, as does having such a casual, close-to-nature work environment. We’ve had a number of visitors these two days, and much to my delight they were all people I knew… and to my amusement every one of them had commented on how different I look with my hair down, in proper office wear, etc. etc. (I won’t be keeping up with that much longer, I think. On my first day I’ve had colleagues very kindly informing me that ‘they’ - or ‘we’ now - tend to dress down a lot more than the other departments. Jeans, t-shirts, slippers and even Crocs… they’re all ok.) I can imagine it’s quite a rare sight for those who’ve only seen me in the field.

And world of small worlds… there are so many connections. One of my bosses is an Imperial Alumna and knows my MSc personal tutor, and a few others are acquainted with people I know from Imperial. Yet another familiar face around - who wasn’t from the conservation scene - is a lady who used to be the school clerk/administrator at my secondary school, who is now the administrator at the office.

Naturally, there’d be questions on my background, where I’m from, and my accent. As usual, and as expected. I suppose it’s something I won’t be able to dodge no matter where I go in Singapore. Again I discover that I am most ill-at-ease and uncertain of my words (I come out sounding weird) when I am brought to be aware of my accent… As I wrote two years ago, I do not wish to come across as posh or elitist, but even when I adopt my most ’standard’ English, I’m aware that I can still sound a little foreign. As the Wiki article on Singlish rightly informs us, “Singlish phrases are sometimes injected into discussions to build rapport or for a humorous effect”. And so I try. Sometimes. But it just turns out awkward. When I’m around people I’m most comfortable with and know that I won’t be judged by my English (or when I do want to be judged), that’s when I speak most fluently, confidently, and naturally. And I enjoy seeing the surprise on people’s faces when they realise that I understand and can speak Mandarin.

In a non-Cantonese setting, I’m what they might call a banana.