Legend of the Doorcrawler

Everyone knows what grasshoppers are, right? They make their habitat in the grass, they look like blades of grass and they hop around. That's how they got their name.

Well, we got visited by one of their insect relatives while we were in Mindo. I was still in the restaurant at our hostel, finishing off some MyBrute fights, and the wife decided to make her way to the room first. Within 2 minutes, she was back by my side again.

"There's a giant grasshopper on our door!"
"Feh. Grasshopper? You're afraid of grasshoppers meh?"

I quickly finished up my games and packed up and went back with her to the room, and I got myself a pretty big shock!


Eep! There was a giant grasshopper on our door!

Or maybe not.

It sure looked like a grasshopper, but it was obviously not in the grass. It was on the door to our room.


And it wasn't hopping. It was crawling, quite determinedly attempting to scale our door. I thought that once once it reached the obstacle presented by the door latch, it would stop.


Nope! It just crawled right over it! And what's more, it stood on the latch and seemed to use it as a boost to go even further!


Then, I thought that if I put my camera right above it and shot the crawler in super-marco mode, it would stop. Most critters can't comprehend it when an obstacle is placed about 1cm in their path, and would either stop or move around.


Not this feisty guy! It really seemed to be on a mission here, so after yet another macro-shot to the head, I decided to just shoo the wife past it into our room and lock the doors before it could think to fly/hop/crawl in.

Thankfully, that worked, and the crawler did not decide to jump into the wife's hair or anything. Otherwise, I think people 2 towns away would have heard her shriek!

Before we left it alone for the rest of the night, the wife wanted me to put my hand right next to it and take a picture, so that everyone would know how big this bug was.


I then thought that using her sock would be able to help everyone visualise the size of this Doorcrawler better. With the sock, you can imagine what it would be like if something like this landed on your foot!


Okay, enough of disturbing the Doorcrawler! Seeing the determination in its face, I figure it must be off to do battle with its evil nemesis, Dr Blue-Footed Booby! We shall not stand in the way of justice!

Critters of Colombia

In our busy lives, we rarely have the chance to observe the smaller world around us. Well, smaller by size, but much, much larger in population.

I suppose this is one of the reasons why I love diving in places like Mabul/Sipadan and Lembeh. We have the chance to observe tiny creatures without the distraction of work, commute and questions on where to have lunch.

We spent exactly a month in Colombia, of which the bulk of it was spent in Bogota studying Spanish, waiting for the wife's laptop to be fixed and getting mugged.

Then we were pleasantly surprised by what the rest of the country offered us in terms of adventure and natural beauty.

I wish I had more good shots of the little friends we met there, but not all photos turned out well. Ah well, in Ecuador, we are supposed to be going to a town that's famous for butterflies and birds. Let's see what we get there. In the meantime, enjoy the rest of this short post!

The thought that it might be poisonous never occurred to me, until a 10-year-old boy became concerned when I told him I had a frog on my hand. Tsk! Ignorant Singaporean!

Bottoms up!

I was expecting it to plant a flag any moment

Isn't it a little warm to be wearing a fur collar?

Idiot refused to transform. Stuuuuupid.