Of Mice and Men

I was alone at the community garden downstairs, trying to transplant more flowers to make a pretty border along the fence, when I discovered I wasn't alone. A giant ass rat (the size of a kitten) darted around the confines of the fenced garden, just as I was about to retrieve a spade for my purpose.

I wasn't quite sure who was more traumatized, me or the rat. Especially since he also ran across my plot of water convulvus. In my fevered excitement, I sent a message exclaiming the fact to Malay Uncle (MU), honcho of our little garden.

Last Saturday, I popped in the garden (after eating Haagan Daaz while watching a mortifying "Super Size versus Super Skinny") to find MU talking to the uncle living at my block. MU said "don't look down, there is a dead rat next to you."

Of course, I looked. You would, wouldn't you?

It was Mr Rat from some weeks ago. I didn't understand how he could suddenly die, since he could run faster than I could from our encounter some weeks ago.

The town council man showed up to collect the carcass while I continued to dig a trench for my intended herb garden. I was surprised again because usually our building cleaner would do any retrieval of our rubbish. He even took a photo of the carcass before getting down to the nasty business.

It was then I understood that the Town Council had poisoned the rat.

Didn't know what was more shocking.... the fact that I have been an accessory to his murder or he could have been pissing his poisoned rat wee wee all over the garden before he croaked. Suddenly I didn't feel like eating anything from the garden. I discreetly threw away the water convulvus I had harvested....

Mystery of the shattered little blue egg

When I came home one day, I saw this along the corridor while watering plants. Such a pretty blue egg shattered on the concrete floor, so sad. I was puzzled why anyone would come to my house and throw an egg on the floor?

Bobo suggested that maybe the stupid mynah birds (irritating winged pests that do take out from my plants, now resulting in my scaling back of edible plants only to find them pecking at the rest of the plants for their nests *^&%$#) stole an egg from another bird's nest to eat but dropped it accidentally.

But I remembered that there was also a mynah nest on the roof, so I went to check online. This was a mynah egg.

[foto source] besgroup

Now that I know that it belonged to my irritating neighbor, I am sort of torn between feeling pity for the bird and thinking "good riddance".

They didn't last very long

One day while watering my oregano, I couldn't help but notice that there was something long and dangling off a fragile stem. Wtf... a giant black caterpillar. zzz. I toyed with the idea of feeding them to those evil birds outside the apartment, but decided that they didn't any more encouragement to hang around my place. 

Besides I was intrigued by the idea of owning my own butterfly. So I decided to keep him in a jar. I poked loads of holes in the paper before I used it as a lid for the insect jar. I fed him sweet potato leaves, since oregano is more precious to me. Surprisingly the caterpillar showed no prejudice towards yellowing leaves, chowing down with no problems (that also answered the question on why the oregano looked a bit naked on one side of the pot).

Guess my surprise when I found another caterpillar on the oregano the next day... Smaller with a white strip down its black back (the one in the foto above). So into the insect jar it went with loads of sweet potato leaves. They chowed them down really quickly. 

I was looking forward to having them build cocoons, when one Saturday morning, I heard the glass shatter. I put it on the makeshift wooden crate, but it wasn't that unstable to fall over for no reason. When I went out, both caterpillars were gone. It wasn't even a windy morning. As I stood there pondering, I realized that the bloody birds did it...(these were the same crazy birds that kept attacking the lime plants, and when I surrounded them with bird nets in a see through fortress, resorted to attacking my orchid leaves).

Couldn't blame them. There wasn't a more filling breakfast than 2 fat caterpillars.