The annotated budak

The birds and the beasts

There's always a village cur or two at the sheltered tip of the pier, lounging by the benches or sniffing the contents of plastic bags whose owners have cast hopeful rods over the murky straits. They pose the slightest of risks to visitors who must keep an eye on the ground amid a scene of welcome contrast to the walled city, lest their shoes greet small mounds from hounds that survive on the goodwill of a community at stake. On the lane leading to the town square, a pack of mangy beasts, including one with a limp, dog a lady who leaves parcels of rice and other morsels by the wayside with the force of habit and fondness of a mother who cannot escape her lesser nature.

There was time to wander around before the play of shadows in song. Swinging left from the pier, the road passes half-open shops with bicycles for rent and signs of resignation to the encroaches of mainland values. Leaky shacks tower over the water's edge, their gangways fringed by poles that serve as sleepy hollows for red-eyed starlings. Resident swallows, when not feeding in the coastal breeze, prefer to perch on a broken line of littoral boulders, one of which a visiting boy mistakes for an alligator as it rises from the tide to guard an island of granite.

We headed towards a quarry where igneous stones were mined to build a city of rock and woe. A detour to the temple of the local lord brought us to a knoll of bare altars, where a pale cat slinked away and betrayed our presence to the canine sentries of a house below the shrine. The road ahead, a rise flanked by gingers and fruit trees, is currently impassable to motorised traffic, for the quarry has swelled from a sinkhole for craned necks to an artificial wetland that laps the edge of the track and threatens, should it gain another inch, to spill over and soak the village on its way to the sea. A rookery that thrived in earlier years appears derelict, for the herons' boughs have drowned a second time in a hole with no way out but up.

A large raptor occupied the peak of the highest tree on the far side of the quarry. Less distant fowl were a stork-billed kingfisher that hunted from the lower branches of an albizia and a family of munias in the grasses by a garden fence. Crepuscular dragonflies were already active, flitting over the still water with the pale lights of ghostly wings. Hill mynas whistled from invisible canopies and a magpie robin sang his way through the understorey. Defying warnings, we skirted a protective railing to stoop on the bank, peering at guppies as they fed and fucked on a slim crest of sodden earth that soon gave way an abyss of brown. A tiger barb prowled the zone between day and dark, and tiny gobies skipped on the silt of sunken slopes.

The whoosh of broad wings drew our eyes from the pool to catch a trio of hornbills on a low sweep down the little-used road. From their avian highway, the birds braked at a small tree by the quarry before leading us on a merry chase to a fig on Butterfly Hill and a clump of bamboos by the main track. One appeared to be recently fledged, having a bill without the tribe's trademark horn. They reappeared on our way back to the village as wraiths in black and white over the basketball court that melted into the upper reaches of a sea almond tree. At least seven swung by with frustrating speed and random trajectories as the twilight drove us from the hill and the air buzzed with large dragonflies on the hunt for the night's first wave of six-legged flyers.

The stage, aglow with loud hues and the source of evergreen hits on the last night of festivities, drew the attention of islanders and itinerant fans who offered incense to domestic gods and celebrated the end of a torrid week with beer and boisterous joviality. While investigating the temple's quieter corners, we found the mutt with a bad leg in a side room, where a young helper revealed his name to be 'Pineapple'. An older volunteer, with the ineffective aid of a small slab of meat, attempted to persuade 黄梨 to raise a paw to palm. But as if weary of cheap party tricks and worn out by a week of nocturnal stimulation, Pineapple paid scant heed to the lame effort and lifted his pads only after much coaxing and with barely disguised eyes at a snooze by the wall. We turned tail as well soon after, but the feasting continued until all the grand fathers and godsires were shipped back to their beds in a chain of boats that plied the gap between a captive creek and a coast of dogged wonderers.

Village Volksoper

The grand old man of southern seafarers marked his birthday this month with a week that brought rare festivity to the last, sleepy village of Pulau Ubin. Flags in faded green and dull red greeted visitors who arrived at the island's jetty and received the helping hands of temple workers or volunteers who proudly donned polo shirts in fresh orange. The celebrations had begun last Monday, when the villagers and their kin from the mainland marched up a hill by a quarry just beyond the settlement to invite the kindly gentleman and his beastly companions to spend a week in 'town'. A day of ritual then concluded with the sounds of ancient scripts and scraps of voices high and shrill on a stage of creaking wood.

Unlike other incarnations of the ancient mariner, who fete their origin on the second day of the second lunar month, the lord of this local rock prefers to be honoured on the holy day of Buddha, a soul whose greatness, it is said, he hoped to emulate. The next morning, Vesākha, was a day of double joy, as prayers and offerings continue anew to Tua Pek Kong in his seaside abode and the Jade Emperor, who graced the occasion with a brief survey of the rites and rigour of a way of life that seeks harmony between humans and earth.     

A hog and fattened goat met their ends, becoming nourishment for devotees and a source of spiritual pleasure to gods still keen on flesh and blood. Trays of braised duck and burnt fowl awaited the faithful, who had journeyed across the straits on a fleet of bumboats that provided free passage in the dying hours of the day. Joss burnt in wholesale volumes, as sticks of fragrant smoke were purchased and stuck in jars of ash for a mere minute or two before busy helpers removed them to make way for more. Those who sought greater favours raised their bids with thicker rods or coils of incense that temple workers hung over the altars using bamboo poles. An old man sat by a wall that separates the worshipers from a seafood restaurant, notating on pieces of red paper the names of those who wished to be remembered for their generosity and faith.

A shrine to a native god lies behind the temple, the remnant of a prettier predecessor in the neighbourhood that vanished in flames. The good lord brandishes a stick and a wavy blade, accepts no offerings of pork and is content to dwell in a lodge with few barriers between his earthly seat and the spiritual realm.

Back in the village square, mythical monsters pranced under the power of men who channel the strength of lions and giant lizards to bless the devotion of followers in search of fortune and a year of good business. The ruler of heaven was then sent packing at teatime and strains of Teochew accompanied an evening of hope, as the temple elders and lords of the netherworld oversaw the crossing of a bridge of peace and prosperity by souls in need of luck and a season of brighter prospects.

The next three days ran a few notches lower, with the temple receiving a mere trickle of knees and a skeletal assembly before the stage at sundown. There were thus fewer spectacles to detract from a superficial study of the world within the walls of a raised, red-roofed platform where the agents of modernity seem a rude transgression into a time that sings a different tune. When we arrived, it was still bright and the troupe were gathered by tables on the set to match tiles and wit before retreating into a theatre of dreams in vivid colour. Mangy curs roamed the surrounding lanes, dipping between the houses to prance on wet sand or tailing the gates of children on stainless steel steeds.

Behind the rear curtain, a long island of chests with drawers, smokes and tiny mirrors served as dressing rooms for the cast, who applied powder and paint to their skin as blue turned black and bright yellow bulbs cast a warm glow over actors whose age and affliation are masked by layers of foundation and rouge. Eyes are enhanced, noses sharpened, brows defined and lips reddened to turn mortal faces into living legends from stories that still come to life to the beat of cymbals and the wail of strings. The stage outside is set with furniture from feudal times, though a bicycle and bumboat intrude on the fringes of a medieval countryside. 

A young man, the grandson of the doyenne who founded this troupe, entertains the curiosity of divers as he toys with fancy headgear, his hair in a mesh that hides a tousled crop and protects the twin-finned cap of a Confucian scholar. Undershirts and long-armed gowns are worn with care, beards plastered on smooth chins and ornate assemblies of pearls, sequins and tassels are nudged onto heads and judged before a panel of glass and gazes that regard the creations before them with cold affection.

On an altar by the doorway to the outhouse, a small shrine seats a trio of deities armed with pacifiers. Childlike in feature and articulate in repose, the godlings are pacified by offerings of rice crackers and cream confections. A few members of the troupe, who appear little older than the robed figurines, snacked on extruded corn as fine brushes traced lines of pigment on wrinkle-free cheeks. Their elders sang along to the ensemble in the wings as they continued their preparations and the first stirrings of an ancient scene rang through a village of latter day saints.

Ritual broke the fourth wall as a temple worker brought platters of fruit and sweetmeat to the stage, where an actress in red accepted the gift while her colleagues maintained the integrity of a excerpt that formed the first of three nocturnal dramas. The treachery of courtly justice, a tale of tears and second chances, and the slaying of a ghoul by a company of clowns offer scant entertainment to ears with little comprehension of a melodious dialect and no memory of the myths that engendered this art. 

Backstage once more for a final glimpse of vintage glamour, we crave for signs of acknowledgement, a wry smile, a twinkle in a glance, the hint of a frown. Little gets in the way of invisible cues and everything falls apart with each passing minute of airs and recitatives that find echoes from low stools and hinged chambers where mementoes of youth and yore are stored. The end is nigh and there is no way back across this bridge of sighs, a tour de force of head and heart in a sea of song that is fast fading and fewer ford.

Lip service

Slimmer in profile and lacking the broad, flared lip of Strombus turturella (canarium), black-lipped conches seem to prefer firm substrates, whereas their edible cousins are abundant in softer deposits that trap walkers with flat feet. The endearing snails were once common on local shores but now thrive only on beaches and sandy bars little molested by man and his machines. On reefs such as Cyrene and islets such as Sekudu, the conches still prowl in shallow pools, peering around with curious eyes and probing the sediment for servings of slow food and molecular gastropody.   

Conches that meet their maker leave behind shells of bleached hues that soon find eager new tenants on tidal flats where homes are scarce and hermits are happy to settle for sloppy seconds. A small Clibanarius will find these clean coils a cozy refuge from other crabs and creatures with crushing teeth. But a few moults ahead, the pilgrim will probably find its burden a hindrance to progress and blight to better prospects. Home turns handicap and unless the crab unearths bigger lodgings, there will be little room to grow save in the insecurity of its final estate.

Going for Bronok

A coastguard vessel swooped in and swept the reef with searchlights midway through our annual survey of Beting Bronok. Alas, these are complacent days, for the land's most wanted have been caught or shot, and the patrol decided to err on the side of discretion by writing off the flashing crew on the emphemeral shore as harmless (f)owls on a flight of nocturnal fancy. 

A large baler snail greeted us at landfall, exuding slime and attitude from a body as large as a good sized foot. Smaller individuals also prowled the periphery for prey, navigating a flat overrun by the slimey columns of zoanthids and clusters of gentle hydroids. Sea pens and soft corals litter the soft substrate, which harbours few footholds for harder polyps. Within these octocorallian colonies dwell pairs of pale shrimp and porcelain crabs that snap at intrusive fingers, though the spiky fringes of one common pennatulacid are enough to discourage ducks uninured to pain in tender parts.

Though densely serrated and bearing a test of unfriendly thorns, the primary spines of pencil urchins, which dot the shoal in good numbers, pose little threat to curious hands seeking to merely peer at a spheroid armoury of spikes, rods and diadems. The cidarids share the flat with two species of temnopleurids, both of which hide their tell-tale forms under a cloak of shells and stones.

With little to hide, knobbly sea stars cling to the edge of the reef, curling with visible strain as the low spring tide strands a few in the still air of a tropical night. A handful of these massive asteroids survive at Beting Bronok, but these are gangly, gnarled creatures that seem to hail from a time when the reef was far richer and fed off the forests of an island now hemmed by a long cold wall. Other sea stars appear to be doing better, though, and the ground was alive with biscuits and cakes as well as the scales and spines of the occasional Astropecten, Gymanthenea and Nepanthia.

Porous spikes and stiff tubes also characterise the sponges that sprout from the silt. Signs of movement from these sessile clumps, as well as ascidians that display untypical motility, usually suggest the shenanigans of a dromid, and the rotund culprit can usually be unmasked by overturning its organic hide to reveal a scowl on stout legs. But bold or bashful, the creatures that inhabit this northern shore – hermit crabs, moon snails, sea cucumbers, moray eels, snapping shrimp, onyx cowries, glass anemones and a drizzle of slugs that challenge both naked eyes and stinging cells – still reward all who wade through its pools with little more than a torch and tool of wireless trade in hand to record in memory the beasts of this bar end. 

Scratch that

The Settlement is an unimaginatively named strip of built-up land near the northeastern tip of Christmas Island, a hockey stick of low dwellings and commercial establishments erected between a high plateau and limestone cliffs that receive little protection from the crashing surf of the Indian Ocean. Despite a century of human inhabitation, the roads, houses and untidy gardens appear to discourage the natives little, for the island's famed land crabs continue to descend from the damp inland forests to the waters of their birth with no regard for walls and wheels.

Where the buildings end, a steep hill rises to a broad highland of phosphate mines and coastal rainforest. The face of this cliff, a cruel scene of sharp edges and unforgiving precipices, provides a refuge for one of the island's loveliest endemics, the golden bosunbird. A subspecies of the white-tailed tropicbird, which boasts a nearly circumtropical distribution, Phaethon lepturus fulvus is restricted to Christmas Island, where the birds feed on pelagic marine life in warm, unproductive seas. The blinding white plumage of the nominate species is replaced by a rich wash of apricot that makes the golden bosunbird appear to be bathed in the light of the magic hour even in the harshest spell of the day.

Catholic in its nesting habits, the golden bosunbird is known to brood in trees or on cliffs and sandy ground. With short legs and webbed feet, the tropicbirds are far more at home on the wing, though, and wheel over the Settlement with every hint of ease and a just a little more visible effort than the larger frigatebirds in the way they sweep and bank above the coast. They seem to prefer a higher cruising level than the frigatebirds and boobies, making for difficult viewing from the ground. But one evening as a storm brewed and the sky turned a lucid grey, a loose gathering of golden bosunbirds could be seen low over the road as they made regular sorties at a grove of trees almost right behind a terrace of cottages. After vanishing into the canopy for half a minute or so, each bird would reappear and attempt to regain its composure before circling back to the trees for another clumsy landing. The ordeal of serving food to mate or chicks must be unnerving – the birds were audibly ornery towards their fellow fowl and one even engaged in aerial hiccups, discarding its sleek profile to bop in midair with puffed head and ruffled feathers as it reached for a vexing spot with puny toes and scratched the surface of a life on air.

No lesser stars

Cyrene Reef offers an encounter that leaves many starstrucked, for the tidal flat is probably the last local stronghold of an asteroid once so abundant coastal communities thought nothing of gathering and grinding them up to fuel village gardens. The oreasterids dominate the fringes of the reef, where the seagrass starts to fray and the meadow has to fight the advance of long fingers of sand, and occur in densities that discourage ducks who can't count.

The population here is large enough to demonstrate the phenotypic variability of these massive sea stars. From standard issue brick and black to shades of red, pink and beige, the animals display a suspicious individuality that puts to shame the nerves of men who gladly think as groups and act like apes. Some stars sport outlandish hues of blue or green, a few boast an arm more (or less) than what the average bear, and a brazen number surround their knobs with areolas of dark pigment. The wide tonal spectrum appears to offer no discernible value for survival to a creature with no discernible eyes, but may tip the scales between a fatal appeal to collectors and the stewardship of curioius minds.

The future of this reef may well hinge upon the ability of these sea stars to fly the flag of conservation in a sea of liberal economics. If these icons foil the axe, their home will serve as a refugia for many other creatures that share a skin of spines and hydraulic tubes for feet. One new knob on the block is a fiendish cousin of Protoreaster with numerous nipple-like nodules, short marginal spines and a dorsal armament of granular plates. Larger specimens usually stand out in a scene of brighter stars, but since the first records of Pentaceraster in local waters, animals of less certain provenance have turned up on Cyrene and nearby flats, suggesting the possibility of hybrids or intermediates in a genus characterised by "a continuous chain of forms" rather than 'good' species that fit tidy taxonomical moulds.

Rather less striking, though occuring in vastly greater numbers, than the armoured giants are fossorial sand stars that have made the sandier bars of Cyrene a zone of pseudocopulation. Imprints of five-armed bodies and tapered discs riddle the loose dunes, which also house scattered colonies of stalk-eyed crabs that probably endure long fasts between fleeting chances to feed in damp squibs. In tender twos, and teasing threes, the stars maintain their grip on mates in a pose that is less a tryst in truth than a prolonged date with destiny.

Seagrass beds also teem with another class of echinoderms that bear little resemblance to their shapelier kin. The frail forms of synaptid sea cucumbers can often be seen tethered to green blades like lazy snakes with medusan heads of feathery tendrils that claw the currents for suspended particles. Other holothurians spend the day in unconsolidated sediments, performing the ecological functions of earthworms in pastures where free-ranging annelids occupy more aggressive niches. By displacing the silt and processing complex organic matter into botanically bioavailable compounds, the sandfish nourish the foundations of a habitat that feeds many but which remains largely out of foresight and absent from the minds who enjoy their fruits.

An even less visible component of the reef's visible infauna, heart urchins plough through the grains like spiny mice in slow motion. Some species are pallid creatures, but the few we came across last Sunday bristled with rosy tests and plumes of candy colours. Adept at life in rich deposits, the cordate diggers were noticably anxious to head back to safer depths; one observer of the spatangoids in a more arid region noted that "exposure was fatal to Lovenia elongata as it came up out of the sand and never got more than a foot in its dash for water." 

More at home in the infralittoral zone are white sea urchins, which are pleasantly abundant on Cyrene though curiously not elsewhere in the southern shores. Despite their apparent inability to mix and match, the urchins' sartorial choices serve them well enough, rendering the balls of pretty spines nigh invisible on a carpet of broken shells and coarse fragments. Predators that rely on scent, however, will probably still home in on the animals and break through their vanity with acid wit and acerbic tongues. 

A final mystery before the sun took its toil, this minute creature raised unsavoury questions about its identity. Resembling the rude end of some abandoned appendage, the organism declined to correct its dislodgement from the substrate, divulging few clues that could help us make head or tail of its vermicular form. Help from more authoritative sources pointed to a widespread genus of holothurians as common as they are cryptic. First described from Hawaii in 1907 and reported to live "a few inches beneath the surface of the soft, sandy bottom of numerous tide pools", these animals range from "burnt carmine and pomegranate purple" in colour and fill their guts with coral sand, which they probably ingest to extract a modicum of sustenance and maintain an ounce of mystery with regards to their precise diet and place in a shoal of questionable destiny.