7am. 21 jan. 2009. i was onboard 157 heading to college. it was crawling it way along lornie road. the empty lanes soon giving way to a sea of damp lights on either lanes. and the march of cars piling towards the city dawn. my bus paused at the bus-stop just opposite caldecott hill.
i saw it. something flew across the road just beyond my double-decked window...close to 400m away. it soared (glided?) above the peak traffic that was heading west. i thought it might be another sea-eagle or a hawk that strayed off its flightpath. and then, it gracefully latched onto a tree just beside a bus-stop.
and goodness me...it was a fairly large colugo indeed. i wasn't fast enough to take a snapshot with my phone-camera. but i stopped breathing, seriously.
http://www.wildsingapore.per.sg/discovery/factsheet/colugo.htm
that rare gem glided right above the traffic. what led it so near the edge of urban life? a nocturnal mammal, was it returning to its favourite tree, to nestle for the day ahead? it struck me that its home locale was ironically close to the very forces that seek to diminish its habitat & range.
one of singapore's rarest mammals, did the colugo also learn to adapt amid the noise and sprawl that pierce uncomfortably close to its forest home? we assume its numbers would decline or even become extinct altogether. our predictions may not be valid afterall.
my morning was broken bright with a colugo in flight. i feel canonized. my secret sight scores high on a scale of ten on ten. just an ordinary thursday on a humble bus to school, just feeling, all glowing, most blessed...
1 comment:
I loved the moments the elusive hummingbirds flew over my head. Watching the distant Falcon circling in the air. Or spotting the odd albino Pigeon in the flock. The more elusive, rarer the animals, spotting it really made our days I must say.
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