/'waıldlaıf/ n. 1 living things and especially mammals, birds, and fishes that are neither human nor domesticated.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that there is a great diversity of species here, of the kind you would never expect to see in Australia. The interesting thing is that the animals here are perhaps more daring and seem to appear more often.
The obvious ones are the dogs. In our street they are everywhere, running around like it’s nobody else’s business. This is one of the reasons I haven’t ridden my bike very much here: they chase me … apparently, so my friend Ruth tells me, to try and bite my legs. Alex has taken to feeding them. Our neighbours say that since he started doing that, they look much healthier and happier, which is great. The down side is that they have all fallen in love with him. They follow him everywhere. He has occasionally had to hop on a passing bus to get to work, otherwise they’d accompany him all the way in to town. When he arrives home in the evenings there is a great baying and howling. “Sounds like Alex is back,” we all say. They run after his taxis, and stand up on their hind legs to try and scrabble their way in through the car door. We had a few friends over for dinner the other night, and I left the door open for two minutes, and suddenly there was a great parade of canine visitors traipsing their way through our laundry and into the kitchen. “Get out! You’ve got us confused with somebody else! Alex lives across the road!” Dumb dogs. Kathryn (who is volunteering at the Fiji SPCA) plans to get them all desexed. They say that that is a big problem here in Suva: very few people have their pets desexed.
A week or so ago, we were sitting around the table, and I heard this faint mewing noise. We opened the curtains and there was a tiny ginger striped kitten clinging onto the fly wire. I thought he may have been stuck, but as soon as we went outside, he jumped down and started wandering around our feet. It was lucky Janet was strong-willed, otherwise Wes and I would have let our hearts rule our heads and invite the little fella in (which, in the long run, would probably not have been a good idea, what with food and toilet training, and all the rest).
Now, here are a couple of photos to try and illustrate some of the more random visitors I have seen around the place.
These are the ants. Not too exciting, you might say. But these guys are like food detectives. Everything in the kitchen has to stay absolutely spotless, otherwise there is a great army of ants arrive to feed on whatever dribble of food you might have missed in the cleaning up. They are absolutely relentless. Janet hates them with a passion. In this photo, there is obviously some small smudge of food on our chopping boards, and these little guys have sniffed it out and are trying to get to the source, so they can invite all their mates along for the feast.
I have no idea where this one came from. Obviously it’s some kind of grasshopper (maybe if there are any biologists out there, you can give me some more detailed info!) but he was there one morning, just happily sitting on our sugar bowl. They have got to be the longest antennae I have ever seen! He hasn’t showed up again since I took this photo.
This spider is sitting on the lid of our gas stove. He’s not too big … maybe a centimetre or so across. Boy, they can move fast, though. I have a feeling that they can perhaps even jump. By the way, sorry Tanni for including this picture. I know how squeamish spiders make you feel. But imagine if you were living here!
Ahh, the millipedes. Maybe about two or three centimetres long, these little guys are everywhere. Shabina told me that they love to habitat dark, damp places. “Like our house,” I retorted. Truly, our house is surrounded by trees, and in the humid climate of Suva, our place must be paradise for the millipedes. So, we’ve been told that we have to keep it clean and dry, and turn our mattresses over on a regular basis, and change the sheets all the time. Yes, change the sheets. I woke up one morning with an itchy, swollen finger, and couldn’t understand why. Then I found a millipede under my blanket. The little son-of-a-gun must have bitten me during the night!! I have had the rather unfortunate experience of accidentally stepping on a millipede. You wouldn’t think it by looking at them, but they make quite a crunch, sad to say. There is also the much larger, much uglier version of the millipede around. I have seen only two of these, but man, you wouldn’t want to run into one in a dark alley at night time. It’s like something from a science-fiction movie. I have been told that they live in mulberry trees and are quite happy to drop down on unsuspecting passers-by. I just read in an on-line encyclopaedia that they are supposedly not poisonous, but I have been warned not to irritate one, because they can spray something into your eyes which will blind you. The fewer of these I see, the better, I think.
We haven’t had too many cockroaches, thank goodness! There were some huge wasps buzzing around at work the other day, which I was quite apprehensive about, but they seem to have disappeared (for the moment)! I have also seen a fair few mongooses. Apparently, being bitten by a mongoose is one of the easiest and most efficient ways to catch rabies.
Last of all, the cute little geckos. I’ve only seen a couple of these, but we hear their calling every now and then. This little one is climbing up my bedroom wall. Apparently they are good for mosquito control, so we don’t complain when we see these guys around.
Well, that’ll do for now, I think. But before I finish off this entry, here’s a little photo of the four of us. Now that Kathryn has arrived, the Team is complete.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that there is a great diversity of species here, of the kind you would never expect to see in Australia. The interesting thing is that the animals here are perhaps more daring and seem to appear more often.
The obvious ones are the dogs. In our street they are everywhere, running around like it’s nobody else’s business. This is one of the reasons I haven’t ridden my bike very much here: they chase me … apparently, so my friend Ruth tells me, to try and bite my legs. Alex has taken to feeding them. Our neighbours say that since he started doing that, they look much healthier and happier, which is great. The down side is that they have all fallen in love with him. They follow him everywhere. He has occasionally had to hop on a passing bus to get to work, otherwise they’d accompany him all the way in to town. When he arrives home in the evenings there is a great baying and howling. “Sounds like Alex is back,” we all say. They run after his taxis, and stand up on their hind legs to try and scrabble their way in through the car door. We had a few friends over for dinner the other night, and I left the door open for two minutes, and suddenly there was a great parade of canine visitors traipsing their way through our laundry and into the kitchen. “Get out! You’ve got us confused with somebody else! Alex lives across the road!” Dumb dogs. Kathryn (who is volunteering at the Fiji SPCA) plans to get them all desexed. They say that that is a big problem here in Suva: very few people have their pets desexed.
A week or so ago, we were sitting around the table, and I heard this faint mewing noise. We opened the curtains and there was a tiny ginger striped kitten clinging onto the fly wire. I thought he may have been stuck, but as soon as we went outside, he jumped down and started wandering around our feet. It was lucky Janet was strong-willed, otherwise Wes and I would have let our hearts rule our heads and invite the little fella in (which, in the long run, would probably not have been a good idea, what with food and toilet training, and all the rest).
Now, here are a couple of photos to try and illustrate some of the more random visitors I have seen around the place.
These are the ants. Not too exciting, you might say. But these guys are like food detectives. Everything in the kitchen has to stay absolutely spotless, otherwise there is a great army of ants arrive to feed on whatever dribble of food you might have missed in the cleaning up. They are absolutely relentless. Janet hates them with a passion. In this photo, there is obviously some small smudge of food on our chopping boards, and these little guys have sniffed it out and are trying to get to the source, so they can invite all their mates along for the feast.
I have no idea where this one came from. Obviously it’s some kind of grasshopper (maybe if there are any biologists out there, you can give me some more detailed info!) but he was there one morning, just happily sitting on our sugar bowl. They have got to be the longest antennae I have ever seen! He hasn’t showed up again since I took this photo.
This spider is sitting on the lid of our gas stove. He’s not too big … maybe a centimetre or so across. Boy, they can move fast, though. I have a feeling that they can perhaps even jump. By the way, sorry Tanni for including this picture. I know how squeamish spiders make you feel. But imagine if you were living here!
Ahh, the millipedes. Maybe about two or three centimetres long, these little guys are everywhere. Shabina told me that they love to habitat dark, damp places. “Like our house,” I retorted. Truly, our house is surrounded by trees, and in the humid climate of Suva, our place must be paradise for the millipedes. So, we’ve been told that we have to keep it clean and dry, and turn our mattresses over on a regular basis, and change the sheets all the time. Yes, change the sheets. I woke up one morning with an itchy, swollen finger, and couldn’t understand why. Then I found a millipede under my blanket. The little son-of-a-gun must have bitten me during the night!! I have had the rather unfortunate experience of accidentally stepping on a millipede. You wouldn’t think it by looking at them, but they make quite a crunch, sad to say. There is also the much larger, much uglier version of the millipede around. I have seen only two of these, but man, you wouldn’t want to run into one in a dark alley at night time. It’s like something from a science-fiction movie. I have been told that they live in mulberry trees and are quite happy to drop down on unsuspecting passers-by. I just read in an on-line encyclopaedia that they are supposedly not poisonous, but I have been warned not to irritate one, because they can spray something into your eyes which will blind you. The fewer of these I see, the better, I think.We haven’t had too many cockroaches, thank goodness! There were some huge wasps buzzing around at work the other day, which I was quite apprehensive about, but they seem to have disappeared (for the moment)! I have also seen a fair few mongooses. Apparently, being bitten by a mongoose is one of the easiest and most efficient ways to catch rabies.
Last of all, the cute little geckos. I’ve only seen a couple of these, but we hear their calling every now and then. This little one is climbing up my bedroom wall. Apparently they are good for mosquito control, so we don’t complain when we see these guys around.Well, that’ll do for now, I think. But before I finish off this entry, here’s a little photo of the four of us. Now that Kathryn has arrived, the Team is complete.
Cheers,
Andy
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