Animals around and in my compound

In our busy schedule daily, and in our quest to make ends meet, we seldom take time to see what animals live around our house. Like plants, they come in varied sizes and ecologically, they are to blend in their environment. This is to ensure their survival.

We human beings do try to blend socially at work and home. Or where we stay depicts or tells who we are or try to be.

While the location is relatively close to Kuala Lumpur, I live in a kampung area with a ‘jungle’ environment. Hence, I get to see a lot of animals missed in town.

We had to save a baby porcupine,because our neighbouring plot of land fell some tree as the owner had new plans for it; the mother died in the process. It grew around our compound and when it was adult enough, it walked away into the woods.

Another time, we bumped into a baby pangolin runned over by a motorbike, brought it home, nursed it and when it was ready it too walked into the woods.

Sometimes, we would bump into some snakes, small and big and our neighbour would do the honour of catching it and send it off into the woods .I really do wish , it would not come back.

While taking pictures of small flowers, I would have the opportunity to take pictures of some insects, grasshoppers and butterflies.

Sometimes, the friendly squirrel would drop by to eat a durian. We left one at the windowsill for them. When we first moved there, we would swoon and get elated when we see them, but after awhile, they become absolutely pesky.

My son tells his friends at school, he has bats or ‘kelawar’ at home, and I reckon his friend thinks he was just making up stories. We do have them up on our third floor look out .

As for neighbours, we get some cute monkeys dropping by for a banana or two. These are not the normal ones but they have black face and hands with long tails. They would not touch ground and live high on trees.

One Saturday, while watching some movie, I heard a muffled thump near the window. As I looked out, I was surprised to see 3 pheasants dropping by from the jungle. Its local name is burung kuang and I have been hearing its hooting at nite but I was pleasantly surprised to see it so beautiful.
There was a story told in books about the birds. Some of us oldies would remember.
One day , the crow got talking to the pheasant. They decided to paint each other. The crow started doing it on the pheasant and did a beautiful job too. When it was the turn of the crow , it was already late in the evening , the pheasant in haste threw the whole bunch of colours on the crow. Hence, the blue black colour .

We have a resident woodpecker, which likes to tap on our main wooden pole of the house. The tapping would vibrate into the house. I guess it’s just sending us some messages, like a morse code, while trying to rattle the insects in the pole.

We have a small stream running under the house, and sometimes my son would try to catch some fish, or even some fresh water prawns . The kingfisher is a normal bird to see, fishing on small fish or prawns behind the house.

At night , we do hear the call of the tortoise or a mother otter ,calling her children and we see them swimming upstream to catch some of the fishes in the stream.

We just need to be more appreciative of what we have around us, big or small. Like flowers, sometimes the smallest are the most interesting with their vibrant colours .

With animals, I realised the females are usually dull coloured , while the males are the ones with pretty and vibrant colours.

We just need to save the environment to save them.