Monday, April 15, 2013

All clear for the ear...

Well more or less anyway.

I went back to the Dr today and he cleaned my ear with a sucky tube thing and sent me home.  He said 'It's a long way for you come isn't it' and I said 'yes'.  He then said 'Only come back if you think you need to'.  So I assume if I lived closer, I would be making another visit??

I am staying less then 40km from this hospital but in my 2 visits it has varied between 1.25 and 1.75 hours for each leg.  The first visit was a total of 3.5 hours in a car and todays one was more like 2.75hrs.

When you work out that it's less then 40km, that equals a very very slow drive…

And this is my 5th trip into Chennai in a week.  Well over 12 hours wasted in cars, buses and auto's!

I couldn't imagine having to commute in this city!

Isn't this how people usually travel in India - the ads say it is so it must be!!??  
Incredible India Indeed!

Sunday, April 14, 2013

A confession, a tiny rhino, a squirrel and the Morelet's

I don't know what others think in the photo below, but without being too judgemental, I suspect someone is trying to hide something and I think given the chance to confess, we may well find out what happened to a certain flying creature…  Unfortunately with egrets and herons living in exceptionally close proximity to crocs, this is a reasonably common occurrence.  But bear in mind they also receive a lot of protection from other predators by living within the croc enclosures.  Only the slow, weak or foolish get eaten so I guess it could be called 'survival of the fittest'.

This rather large flying creature is apparently a rhino beetle.  It took some time to get this photo as it was intent on flying away, we eventually managed after it realised it wasn't going anywhere until after I got a photo.  When it was flying it reminded me a lot of the New Zealand weta.  A huge, almost cumbersome creature.
Rhino beetle
The Indian squirrel is tiny!  About the size of a chipmunk (if you've seen one of those) or a medium/large rat (I suspect we have all seen one of those!)  It is incredibly fast and it has taken me weeks to get a photo that isn't just a blur from one edge of my photo to the other!  Very cute indeed.

I am observing some Morelets hatchlings each night and this is a photo of the second time they were platform fed.  Up until now they have been tong fed - long metal tongs that allow us to control who gets what in terms of food.  They each had turns so Mr Feisty-Pants (name changed for privacy reasons, lol) who would leap at the tongs as soon as he saw them coming got the first bit and then the rest took turns while Mr Feisty-Pants attempted to get to the tongs before the slower more timid crocs.
Mr Feisty-Pants on the right guarding the food while the littlest one tries to climb aboard
The ranks don't seem to have changed now we place all the food on a platform and they help themselves.  Mr Feisty-Pants is still the first to eat and the others have to be quick witted and clever to get to the food.  They are getting much better at this now and the last feed they had, everyone got a good share of the food.