You know, all that newspaper advertisments about having the wildlife as your neighbours - so-called co-existing with the natural environment - isn't all that’s crack up to be. When some years ago, my family moved out of our tiny terrace house in D’sara U (at the urgings of MySis, who wanted to be married in the new house), we’ve only changed location and species.
Neighbours shall always be busybodies, always coming in at odd times. And just as ugly.
Let’s start with a mugshot shall we?
Okay, this isn’t the most threatening of monsters, but I still say it’ll scare a few baby geckos to a corner. This is Bear-bear. He
is a neighbour, property of my homicidal baby nephew. BabyNabil brought it into my room and after I had to drag him out, Bear-bear stayed. His most dangerous weapon is using himself as a flying missile.
Here are neighbours my father adopted. They were just helpless creatures, swimming in a large pond at the Ikano pet store, having to live in clean water and being fed healthy food. Thanks to my father, they were taken out of their easy life and put into the 6ft by 4 ft square tank filled with algae and subjected to fear of death by stoning by BabyNabil, who likes to drop stones into the water.
This neighbour is a smart one since he drops in mostly at night, sneaking through crevices unknown and disappears comes daybreak. He stays mostly in the kitchen, feeding off baby cockroaches so we all tolerated him. I called him Shrooms since he looked like a fungus.
Here’s a fellow who had taken residence at the back garden, amongst the herbs. God knows where he came from but he brought his wives and kids with him! Stumbled across a nest of eggs but they still came back. Luckily we have 2 cats so the lizards population was kept low.
Here’s the elder of the 2 cats, Patchy. Named so for his jet-black patches, he’s one of 4 brothers born to our older cat (bless her). Now the only survivor, he’ll be 13 years old this March and is already a very grumpy old man.
Younger cat Dusty. Don’t let the sweet, sleepy personality fool you. I had to scratch his head for the umpteenth time just to get him to stop moving and biting long enough for a photo. He’s half-Persian, was 5 last December, a gift of MySis’s friend. He’s the only animal BabyNabil is afraid of since he scratches and bites a lot, which makes Dusty my favourite pet.
Birds of course you’ll know would be plenty. But unlike the fat pigeons of
mamak stalls, these birds had to compete each other for limited resource. This one actually flew into the house and was pecking at old rice bowl before we caught it and set it free. In retrospect, this bird, when stuffed with
briyani rice, would have tasted real good.
Dogs you know are a common feature in every neighbourhood, no matter how new. They sh** everywhere, break into trash-boxes and scare joggers and children. Every time the security guards shoo them out, they procreate. I wouldn’t describe what the hell these two are doing but I think the third is waiting his turn.
Did I mention I’m living next to a natural environment? I think I did. This picture is to reinforce that. If you haven’t any idea what neighbour this is, then you haven’t been watching enough DC comic movies. This bat just decided to fly in to get out of the rain and had chosen our ceiling simply because we left a window open. He eventually left but we closed our windows during heavy storms now.
Aha! The most notorious neighbour yet. He has a reputation for terrorizing 5 blocks of houses, eating the neighbourhood’s fruit trees and sneaking into kitchens to steal rubbish. BabyNabil was ecstatic when this monkey (who I named Foget) first appeared, most probably because my nephew has found a kindred spirit. I have more pictures of this guy. I’ll give him a proper personal blog entry someday.
And the most dangerous neighbour of all...
I’m sure it’s not fair as you can see this sweet, innocent - deceitful, conniving - little baby face. BabyNabil will turn 3 years old this June and he’s a holy monster in my house. His parents work all the time so they drop off their only child with my parents, his sla-, I mean, grandparents.
He practically lords over everything and everyone, from the Astro TV to Barney the Dinosaur DVDs to
nasi lemak with eggs for breakfast. Every breakfast. Otherwise he’ll scream and mope around the house and nobody will have peace. A complete brat, this neighbour is the most effective parasite.
My only thanks to him is that he has cured me of any maternal streak I ever had about having children (eeep!). See what I had to wake up to everyday? I’ll be glad if I ever reach age 30. It’s tiptoe around the monster field, which is one of the reasons I still have Bear-bear safe in my room.
