Friday, June 23, 2006
Nasty Little Buggers
by venitha
You'll see monkeys in Singapore, I IM to 8-year-old Kalyn, adding the escalating ee-ee-ee-ee monkey emoticon.
"And monitor lizards," Jim says aloud over my shoulder.
"We can save that for later. I want her to come."
"Monitor lizards are going to seem like chopped liver after crocodiles."
"Yeah, I don't really need you to remind me of that."
A week from now, Jim and I will be in Australia, which is bound to provide a menagerie of entertainment, though at this point I'm really wishing I hadn't read Bill Bryson's alarming In A Sunburned Country.
Beasty Top End highlights:
venitha
"And monitor lizards," Jim says aloud over my shoulder.
"We can save that for later. I want her to come."
"Monitor lizards are going to seem like chopped liver after crocodiles."
"Yeah, I don't really need you to remind me of that."
A week from now, Jim and I will be in Australia, which is bound to provide a menagerie of entertainment, though at this point I'm really wishing I hadn't read Bill Bryson's alarming In A Sunburned Country.
Beasty Top End highlights:
- Crocodiles. I'm actually really looking forward to these, and we are guaranteed to get up close and personal with plenty of them in Kakadu National Park.
- Kangaroos. Wallabies and wallaroos, too; who knew? I'm keeping my fingers crossed - please cross yours, too - as there are no guarantees that we'll see any other than on menus. Will we eat them? Yes. Or does that hurt our chances of seeing them?
- Flying Foxes. They sound cooler than cool, right? Then you read the fine print and discover their true identify: really frickin' huge bats. Ugh! I don't even like the fruit bats at Singapore's Night Safari, and please don't anyone tell Kalyn about them.
- Frilled Lizards. Apparently the frill only opens when they're pissed off, so either I don't really need to see one or I need a really long didgeridoo.
- Cane toads. In spite of having seen a stellar documentary on them, cane toads had totally slipped my mind until I stumbled across this news article earlier this week. Do we have good timing or what?
- Koala Bears. Nope, no koala bears in Northern Territory. Nor are there any in Western Australia, the capital of which, Perth, is the other Australia destination that's reasonably close to Singapore. Ah, well, my little sister, who owns a Waltzing Matilda-playing stuffed koala bear from her time as an exchange student in New South Wales, claims that koala bears are nasty little buggers anyway. Apparently that's going around in Australia. I guess I'll stick with the crocs.
venitha
