Two Snakes

Pasir Ris Park in Singapore is a good place to see snakes. On my very first visit, I saw an Oriental whip snake (reported here), and on my next trip, we saw a paradise tree snake. It was chilling on a wooden railing – hard to miss, really.

Paradise tree snakes are also known as flying snakes, because they can flatten their bodies and glide from tree to tree. I was hoping to see it glide, but this particular snake eventually crawled onto a tree and disappeared into the bushes.

So I have a 100% success rate at Pasir Ris Park so far – two trips, two snakes. But what I was really hoping to see was a mangrove pit viper. Oh well, maybe next time.

I did however see a viper last weekend at Thomson Nature Park – a male Wagler's pit viper which had just had a meal.

A close-up of the eye. Vipers are so cool.

Shunbun no Hi: Giant Leaf

I'm almost a month late with my annual Spring Equinox post (it completely slipped my mind), but I've been wanting to share these photos for a while.

The Singapore Botanic Gardens have these palms – Vanuatu fan palm, I think, but I could be wrong – with absolutely humungous leaves. Here's one such leaf, with my forearm for scale.

There's a little depression at the base of the leaf, where rotting leaves and other natural debris can accumulate.

Seeds land there too, and if the conditions are right, little saplings can sprout on the leaf itself. You can just about see this in the top photo too, but here's a close-up.

Stay Out of Trouble

I like reading, so I often get books as gifts, and some of them come with inscriptions. My all-time favourite inscription is from my college friend Darshana, in a book she gave me after I finished college and just before I left for London.

I like the choice of book too – The Penguin Book of Indian Railway Stories. I love trains, and Darshana and I had a really nice overnight train ride together. But the inscription is just perfect. It's a quote from Stay Out of Trouble by the Kings of Convenience, a band which she introduced me to.

Darshana and I got in trouble a few times. Science City in Kolkata had (perhaps still has?) life-size animatronic dinosaurs. At one point, some of them were discarded and dumped in an off-limits area of the park. I saw them from the highway, on the other side of a fence. In this untended and overgrown corner of the park, they looked much more real and in their element than among the fake trees and landscaping of the Evolution Park.

I asked Darshana if she wanted to scale the fence with me and get up close to the dinosaurs, perhaps even climb on them. She said "Let's do it."

So one day we scaled the fence and entered this off-limits area of Science City. We were making our way through the undergrowth, approaching the dinosaurs, but before we could get too close, a guard saw us. He gave us a firm talking-to, threatened to fine us for trespass, but eventually let us go with a warning.

We didn't get to climb on the dinosaurs, but before the guard appeared, I did get a photo.