We went from fresh and clean to really muddy in a matter of minutes during our pre-dawn foray onto the Pasir Ris mud flat yesterday. We should have known really, but well. Sometimes we never learn. Soon after we ventured out and started sinking into the mud,
James decided he had to hide his equipment in his waterproof bag before attempting to crawl out.
After I sank something like 10 times, my pants were suitably weighed down by mud up to my thighs. (This brings me back to field trip days down at Chek Jawa when we were still allowed onto the mudflat. Oh, sweet waist-deep mud.)
But the trip was worth it, albeit tiring. Despite the physical exertion of having to drag oneself out of mud many times, we saw many interesting animals!
This blue hermit crab was trying to move house, unfortunately the snail was still alive.
This bearded mudskipper gamely posed for pictures.
The shore was absolutely riddled with these tiny anemones.
How exciting!
Kok Sheng spotted this large dog-faced watersnake.
We ambushed a few feeding tube worms. This guy had a tiny crab for a hat.
Tiny whelks carried tiny anemones on their shells.
Sand stars were also abundant here.
Lots of Haddon's carpet anemones as well.
A bitten biscuit star.
Everyone was covered in mud.
Ball sea cucumbers were everywhere!
As if by some flight of black magic, Kok Sheng managed to summon a cake sea star. I swear, I was right there.
A stranded snapping shrimp.
As we gave up on getting stuck every few steps of the way, we made our way back to the high shore. Exploring the mangrove area, we ambushed the many fumbling fiddler crabs.
Sun rise!
This fiddler crab was trying to flee as we neared, unfortunately he'd picked a burrow occupied by a rival male that very effectively blocked his way!
My exclamation of "Dead toad!" piqued Ivan's morbid senses as he bounced over saying something about good for
Monday Morgue.
On the bridge at Pasir Ris park, we encountered this macaque that was fiddling and humping a pong pong fruit, obviously very used to humans taking his picture.
It was muddy but enjoyable. If only my butt didn't ache so much from crawling out of the mud so many times!
At least there were no sandflies.
We read somewhere that to train the cat to walk on a leash takes a number of stages:
Dirty is at stage 1 now. I feel slightly bad for her to have the extra thing on her 24hours a day, but it doesn't seem to bother her very much now. She slunk a lot at first though, it was hilarious stuff. I think a bit of outdoors would make her less grumpy, don't you think? Can't wait for cat walks. Just the thought of it cracks me up!
