Forget not our living forest

This Longhorn beetle is pretending to be an ant nodule.

Someone once told me that "Rainforests are a perfect picture of decay and life, and that is what really differentiates a forest from a garden."

This is a living parachute... I mean colugo. 

I went on a walk along McRitchie reservoir with the NUS Toddycats yesterday, and my goodness, it was quite an eye opener. Before this walk, I had only been to the treetop trail and along the main reservoir itself so going on this Venus drive loop was quite fun. The Toddycats are a cool group and they have quite a few stories to tell. Its pretty heartening to hear the two little kids who were with us eagerly rush forward screaming "STORY! STORY!" whenever our guides found something interesting. While I normally disapprove of screaming children, I think I would rather have them be a nuisance and learn something rather than just be nuisances and be dunces.  

NEED. TO. PRACTISE. MORE. MACRO.

There are certainly more animals and insects to be seen along this trail. The foliage is a lot denser and is more mature, and there is a pretty good distribution of fig trees and rotten logs along this loop. I was quite surprised to actually see many of the larger animals; my tour group was not the quietest. But in addition to the skink, colugo, and copper cheeked tree frog, we also saw tiger shrikes, a drongo, a slender tree squirrel, and some puddle frogs (which are the most adorable things ever) so it was overall a pretty fruitful biodiversity walk!

Flatworms are so WEIRD. 

But as usual, its a bit sad to hear that like Bukit Brown, the MacRitchie forest is also under attack from the monster called development. The government wants to put an MRT line right through the heart of the forest, fragmenting it. If you want to be a troublemaker, enjoy protesting, or actually give two hoots about the development, you can read up on the proposed cross-island line and why its a terrible idea here  and petition against it here.

"The forest of MacRitchie... IS UNDER ATTACK!"  Instead of having a godzilla-sized skink attack Singapore, maybe we should let him save the day?

 I think if I ever get the chance, I would like to try and do a research paper about stories and conservation. If there is one thing that I've learnt the past few semesters is that stories are very important... so perhaps when I can get my head around the concept properly I can refer to some of my own experiences here on this blog. I mean, making comics and taking photos are one way to tell a story, and one of the driving forces behind getting people on board for conservation can be said to be stories. Hmm... conservation comics. That may be a good holiday project to pursue.

"goodnight, sweet prince."