January 21, 2007

Haiwan...

...means "animals" in Bahasa.
This week we've encountered a few animals.
Animal lovers and members of PETA should stop reading at this point.

So the first animal we saw wasn't really an animal. Looking out our window to our lovely back yard I thought I saw a small dead mouse. No pictures, but it was about 1 inch long with a tail. Anthony agreed. Couple days later we realized it was poo...in the shape of a small dead mouse. Oh well.
The second animal was a monitor lizard on one of the roads near our house. We saw him when our parents were here. This time we think he was injured...again no pictures, but 4 foot monitor lizards are worth the words.

The third animal entered the scene during a language lesson on Friday. Adik, Kakak's almost 3 year old son, walked into the room carrying, well more shaking, a small cage with an adolescent squirrel in it. Poor thing was so scared, particularly when Adik got near the cage- what else can a 3 yr old do but shake a cage? I mean, he couldn't hold the squirrel so shaking was the best interaction he could get. Any animal activists that didn't stop reading when I told you to, yes, of course we tried to stop him.Saturday morning we went with Kakak and family to an aquarium to get fish for their new home aquarium.
All was going well. Seemed like your average fish aquarium.
They had huge dragon fish (common in Asia...I think) mostly just for display purposes.They had coy. Typical.

Then things started getting interesting.
Ever heard of a clown-face fish?We hadn't either. But there it was. It was the neatest thing. A fish that looked like it had pink lipstick. That was enough to make me consider getting my own aquarium, just to have the lipstick fish.
But as we made our way past the rest of the tanks...the lights slowly came on...
I'm guessing that because you've never heard of a Clown-face fish, you've probably never heard of the "Argyle Fish" either...Didn't think so.
If that has dazzled your curiosity then you may not be prepared for the elusive "Chinese Lucky Fish"...
Those of you not well-versed in Chinese Characters don't realize that the scales on this fish are telling you to catch it, and if you do you get 3 wishes.
Kidding, we can't tell what the character actually says because we don't know Chinese- but given the name, I bet it's something to do with "Lucky."

I reconsidered getting the fish. They're tattooed, and I'm not one to welcome such open rebellion into my home. Although if I ever find the tattoo parlor they all went to, or the man whose job is tattooing lipstick on fish, I will surely take pictures and post them.

To round off our week of animals, here's what Bang-Aiman (the 6 yr old son), ate for lunch...
a whole plateful of these, um, well, shells. I guess maybe mini-conchs or something. Anthony tried them and said they were good.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You go Anthony!! Not only has he developed a taste for vegetables which he wouldn't touch as a child - but now he's into conch-shells - that's my boy! Oh yeah, wish I could find that color the lipstick fish is wearing! MammaL