This snake-like vine, about a dime’s diameter thick, reaches just above the trees topmost leaf. It’s strong enough to hold my weight. Perched on a precarious branch, appreciating the miles of view, I decided to take a closer look and observed a second vine. This, much smaller string-thick vine shot off little pig-tail snares in every direction. It looks careless, but it is resourceful to utilize the larger vine’s slaved-for access to the top. I am still a bit puzzled on how it reached the top so effectively, as between its highest point of contact and its second highest point;, there is a 2 foot gap of loose hanging. Did wind blow it to the top? Or did wind rip its other points of contact away? I’m not too sure. The Polynesian word for palm tree is something like “Tree of Life.” But I found a palm that is so thorny it’s more like Tree of Pain. The amazing thing is how efficiently it makes its thorns. The individual leaves instead of falling off, start to roll into a cone that eventually becomes a very hard pointy spear. And the branches which hold the leaves don’t fall off normally either. They leave behind a triangled section of branch that over time becomes sharp scales which line the trunk as it grows. And then there are 6 inch centipedes that sleep out in the open, protected by thousands of fallen tamarind leaves that look exactly like the body and legs of a centipede. And if the creature still feels uncomfortable it will crawl up to the tree and hide under the tamarind tree’s loose bark. The area around this tree is full of rotting plant material, perfect environment for what centipedes eat. At any given time if I want to mess with one of these bugs I just have to go to the tree and patiently peel off some bark or stir up the leaves, and within 10 minutes I’ll have one. A picture really is worth a thousand words here but I’ve got no camera. You guys got any cool nature in your area?
Im in Africa, within 15km of me I have a game park. Which has the big 5 (lion, rhino, elephant, leopard and buffalo). I live in a pretty rural area (known as Jikeleza), so I often have to beat the sh!t out of nature to get it out my house. There is nothing more annoying than finding a cape vervet monkey sitting on your tv in your bedroom when you get home. A friend of mine didnt like them climbing on his car (brand new SLK), so he put a rubber snake on the bonnet. The problem with this is they tried to stone the "snake". He did not find it as funny as I did.
Those bastards sound annoying. I picture a mischievous minded creature with agility greater than yours. What effect does swinging a broomstick at them have? People hear that you have lions in your backyard and get fearful, but I have sharks in mine, and another person has a rattlesnake. Surely your dangers are more significant than in some suburbs in America but to you is it just a minor hindrance? I ask this because the Amazon sounds so dangerous, with poisonous insects abounding, and children-snatching anacondas, and black piranhas. But there are tribes playing in the river, walking around barefoot. Dangers imposed by nature seem to go over-exaggerated until actually experienced. You think that holds truth? Do you ever walk out into the game park just for the hell of it? Or is it too dangerous for that?
I can spend a couple of days posting no stop pics of spiders I photographed around these parts... I'm sure you must have seen some in the picture threads
I remember when I used to go to Matheran during summer. We had a tin roof on our shelter and the monkeys would keep throwing stuff on it or jumping down. Or it would rain (though I like the sound of rain beating on tin roofs).Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
...this one being my favourite: the feared Phoneutria keyserlingi, found in my very bedroom Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I have red foxes, eastern cottentail rabbits, pilliated woodpeckers, white-tailed deer, field mice, voles, and lots of even more common animals around my place. A few months ago, I only had cars and people. Much improvement! I took my nephew out tracking animal prints in the snow two weeks ago, and we saw foot prints of all the above, minus the woodpecker. Varda: OMG, NOES! that's huge! S&D: I spent a little over a month in the deep Amazon doing environmental studies. It was really awesome, though a few encounters freaked me out a bit: 1) flies - there was one area where the flies were so thick that you would choke on them. We left our sweat-filled hats together in one spot to draw the flies away. It worked, but when we were done, they were covered in millions of flies. 2)death-spider. I forget the name now, but one student almost poked a spider with her finger to point it out; the guide jumped on her, and yelled for 10 minutes about how a single bite meant that he'd have to cut her arm off, or she'd die. 3)penis-fish. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candirú yeah. Luckily, we didn't encounter this one in the wild (speedos provide a sufficient armor).
