maggies and crows (and bears).....oh, and turtles

I remember when I was at primary school, we had to walk through a park along the waterfront on the way to school that has these huge trees in it, and there were nesting magpies there. They used to swoop down on you if you walked under them during nesting season. Magpies are notorious for it!

There is even a list of magpie HOTSPOTS to be avoided! (fwiw, I just love "Dave's" comment there about how he "was intending to go for a walk to loose weight but I gained a PHOBIA !!!",
and also the response from Matty D who writes: Next time he swoops you, bash that little once with your sunday mail! It will be the last time he bothers you! No need to use excessive force. Just a reminder of who’s boss! )

anyway, when we were growing up, a friend's younger brother always seemed to be picked on all the time by the maggies. We used to wear special "hats" (ice-cream buckets on our heads with little eyes drawn on them) to try scare the maggies off. Dont know if it really worked or not, but cool hats, and a great excuse to eat more ice cream!!

(But as Geoff writes: a friend told me that placing an ice cream container on your head is good protection, but be sure you have all the ice-cream out first ! Otherwise you will look like the Magpie got ya ! ) Of course there is always the suggestion from a commenter on this site who writes: i prefer to wear a fashionable tin pot on my head whilst out and about. that way they see the shiny metal, go for you, but you chuckle to yourself cause you know you have adequate protection and once they swoop it'll be 'THWACK' on the beak for them fuckos.


But I digress....



Anyway, over the weekend, we were walking out from PIL house to the train station, going past a big uni with lots of trees in the grounds, and all of a sudden a young lass coming towards us was swooped on my a crow! At the same time, another kid on a bike was yelling out to his mate that "someone else has got attacked by the crow". I so didn't know that crows swooped like this during nesting season. But now that I do, I was shit-scared walking down to the park yesterday morning as there was one m-f*ker of a crow watching us the whole time.... I was swinging my arms around mine and L(in the baby bjorn)'s head as well as K's head too, freakin out that the crow was gonna get us. Luckily we escaped unharmed!

So of course in my twisted logic, this all made me think of the mighty brisbane bears (follow the logic: AFL teams Adelaide Crows and Collingwood Magpies), who seem to be not so mighty this year, and are actually no longer bears, but in fact lions. My brother sent over a super cute Lions supporter onesie and bib for L! Now if only we can get back to Aus during footy season one year to go to a game (sigh). And now both my niece and nephew are playing AFL too. To think when I was growing up, if you even hinted at any ball sport other than rugby (=league in primary school. Union in high school was acceptable, lol) you were laughed at. Now AFL has such big support even in Qld.

As for the turtles? Well, we visited friends over the weekend, and there was a small matsuri going on at their local shrine, in Kamata, Ota-ku. We went to have a peek, and I was stunned by the number of food and game stalls that were set up for this tiny shrine. I swear there was at least 500 stalls! But the most interesting one was the turtle scooping/fishing (亀すくい）stall. Catching goldfish has always been associated with matsuri (and even with the Ekka back home in Bris when I was a child) but TURTLES! I SO wanted to have a go, but J wouldn't let me - he said they were "green turtles" and they grow up to be quite big in size. Bummer, they looked so cute, and I reckon I could have scooped up a few ;-)

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

On a bit of a spur of the moment decision, we ended up at:
(cue Wada Akiko voice)
"FUJI
Safari Pa-----ku"
on Saturday with PILs. The ad for this is one of the most annoying in the world! It totally sticks in your head,


needless to say we were all singing "honto ni, honto ni, honto ni, honto ni lion da" all day.

This is a different kind of zoo, where you lock yourselves in your car, and drive around the bears, tigers, giraffes, etc who are all out in the open. The coolest part was when a giraffe walked past our car. Man they are big fellas.It wasn't cheap (2700yen per adult, kids under 4 or 6 free to drive in your own car, an extra 1500yen each to go in the safari bus!!), but it was cool seeing the animals right up close like that. And all of K's favourite animals were there - elephants, giraffes and zebras. There was also a small patting zoo, with pigs, kangaroos and some very sad looking wallabies with their ears all eaten away, possibly by one nasty boss wallaby. We had a good day, but K has had a bit of a persistant cough for a few weeks now, and it seems to get worse when she runs around. So of course she got so excited at the petting zoo and ran all the way to the restaurant where we were gonna have lunch, so that as soon as we got into the restaurant, she coughed so much she up-chucked, everywhere. All over herself and of course me. So everyone else ordered lunch while I got her cleaned up. Then J said they would watch her while I ordered at the counter. There should have been 3 sets of eyes on her, so I still can't work out why she ended up in the men's toilets, with MIL standing at the door trying to bribe her out. Once they got her out, PIL and J were then too busy in some stupid conversation about where that door leads to, that no one was watching K. Even me at the counter ordering had an eye on her, but not them. I stuck it up them - 3 sets of eyes and not one of them on her!! Am sure I hav been labeled psycho gaijin mum now. At least it might give them a kick up the butt to be more vigilant in watching her, if only to stay out of my wrath, lol。

hai, o-ka-pi!

Last Wednesday was a public holiday so we headed out to Zoorasia in Yokohama. (I was singing U2 songs in my head all day for some reason, hehe, which then reminded me of schoolies, as some friends were really into u2, and we were doing some wierd "zoo" dance thing or something. I , myself was more into the chilly willies (RHCP) at that time...but I digress....)

So, Zoorasia, it was an amazing zoo, and I totally recommend it because it has the most amazing range of wierd and wonderful animals, it is really clean and smells like roses (well, maybe not roses, but there is none of that usual Japanese zoo smell around) and the animal inclosures are relatively natural looking.

K's favourites of the day were the elephants (zou-san) and monkeys. I was impressed to see the tree kangaroo, as I had never seen one before, and the Malayan Tapir, which K kept calling an elephant:


but I definately think the highlight was the OKAPI, or as K knows it, the zebra, haha:


very cool