The annotated budak

Time for a tiny tiger

Eight days of pussy galore await at the CWS-Post Museum Tiger Show from 21-28 February.

Roach on a roll

Unlike their housebroken cousins, the cockroaches that run wild in the woods have few chances to harry kitchen gods and bedroom queens. For though they may be similarly indiscriminate in their diet, the latter are generally more discrete, hiding their limbs under broad pronota and maintaining an air of reserve in stark contrast to the domestic beasts that scurry over toes while flaunting lengths of spiny leg.

Some forest roaches forage on shrubs. Others plough through the leaf litter. Dead wood draws those happy to chew on fungi or settle for decaying matter. Most, despite their often cryptic attire, are easily recognised as members of the despised order. But this black capsule that crept over logs by the trail on a dark, dry night invited confusion with quite disparate arthropods. Woodlouse or pillbug, suggested the shield-like carapace and the creature's habit of rolling itself up into a tight ball when disturbed. The antennae, however, lack the kink of terrestrial isopods and a sly peek at what's beneath the habit showed far too few pods for a millipede.

Other secrets, it seems, are tucked beneath the insect's wingless hide. Alas, the roach was reluctant to reveal her private parts, which combine the properties of cow and kangaroo in their reported harbouring of blind nymphs who suckle on milk from cozy orifices at the base of her legs. The males of her kind are pterygous roamers who stay just long enough to leave a legacy of little burdens. Early in their history, cockroaches shied away from the colonial instincts of their wood-boring kin. But after millennia of offensive individuality, social progress has finally arrived in this branch of rank mavericks, who now imbibe the fair notion of a division in labour where the boys fly loose to brave the birds and the bees while the girls sit tight in the safe zone of earthbound maternity.

The ear of living dangerously

Some creatures seem to lack any special talent for survival. Lacking the patagia of even slimmer climbers, the earless agamid cannot glide between tall trunks. No venom or vicious claws defend the lizard's reedy frame. Only the merest hint of a crest lines the angular head, which causes some to mistake the lizard for a young or weedy representative of its tribe. Unlike its more robust kin, this spindly agamid never ventures out to the fringes, preferring to hug the trees of forests that have half forgotten the heavy touch of man. Caterpillars are reported to be its primary food, a preference that allows the reptile to cohabit with cousins that dine mainly on ants.

In woods where death arrives on soft wings and sharp fangs, these lizards live by their wits, making swift judgement calls to flee or find refuge in absolute stillness, in the hope that hungry eyes will miss their hide against the grey green of living bark. This male, however, seems to be unhedging his bets, for his rufous head and bright blue eyes cry out for attention from a perch of drab shades. But there's no contest between a life of perpetual concealment and the hazard of colours that might persuade a slender lass to tango with the risk of mortal exposure for half a chance of eternal life in a jungle of permanent jeopardy.

Your better side

What’s the use of a name? What good is it to learn a nick, call it off and fall into a frenzy when a chance encounter forces you to claw back the shadows of faces you have never bothered to forget?

What use are names when there is seldom enough time for more than a passing shot before the light fades and your batteries run out of juice and lame justifications? If only there were fewer paths and far more stops where I could sit and stew in your presence until you regard the intrusion as nothing more than a ripple – a lifeless thing you need not fear and couldn’t care less about.

There are two sides to each meeting of unconnected minds. One is anxious for answers and fears the eternity of every moment lost to memory. The other is happy to capture the mere thought of this privilege and shed all illusions of power that come to play in games of mismatched wills. Why should one fear the nameless and the unknown when answers to questions you can’t even ask dance before your eyes and settle on shiny leaves?

Does it matter that I can make a guess about your family but have no clue to who you are? Can you remember any trace of your grubby past, spent in half measures amid blades that had to be cut and chewed to fuel your present flight? The day retreats and you advance in boldness, rearing on long, spiny shanks to prop up wings that glow in the dim of a shrill twilight.

Under a cloak of universal invisibility, lovers on small scales sweep past to shock with silent caresses that brush past stiff and salty faces. For some, the scent of virgin lures conquers all senses save the drive to secure half a chromosome of immortality. Many are left wanting, ending the night as empty husks on dew-stained webs or worn bodies that failed to win the heart of cold maids. Still, enough survive to extinguish their passion and squeeze each other dry in a meeting of behinds that will spawn a fresh slaughter of young shoots and the prolonged massacre of trees to fuel a need to know and name every mystery that takes to the air on the thinnest of strings.

Grass houses

Plain tiger, Pulau Ubin.

What does natural life need? First, it needs privacy, even in the smallest backyard: like humanity, it wants somewhere it can sometimes go and not be seen. Many modern gardens are like glass houses without internal walls, with every function in full view. Second, nature is a self-victimising process, it needs a supply of victims. You can't massacre all the small nameless insect life in an area and then complain about the lack of butterflies.

– John Fowles, Weeds, Bugs, Americans (1970)

How about a hug?

Telamonia dimidiata, Lower Peirce.

Would you embrace me
if I waxed my limbs and shaved
till all's smooth as silk?