adventures in china

Yep, it’s about over now. I fly home tomorrow morning.

Interesting foods eaten: snails, pig brain, fish heads, cow skin, chicken head, chicken feet, sea urchin, assorted intestines, fermented things…

Things stolen: computer, mp3 player, pair of shorts, external harddrive, camera, ~30 yuan, buckets for the experiment, red ribbon, mesh, a bottle of rice alcohol on a train…

Frogs genera photographed: Bufo, Rana, Rhacophorus, Philautus, Microhyla, Kaloula, Microletta, Polypedates, Chirixalus, Kurixalus, Ferjervarya, Limnonectes, Duttaphrynus, Xenophrys, Leptolalax…

and

New DVD’s: Stranger Than Fiction, Tropic Thunder, Pineapple Express, Observe and Report, Knocked Up, Year One, Superbad, Zoolander, Smiley Face, Hot Fuzz, The Ladies Man, Happy Texas, The Big Lebowski, The Full Monty, Choke, Sideways, Chop Shop, Gran Torino, Gangs of New York, Gladiator, 300, Valkyrie, Sweeny Todd, Edward Scissorhands, Lethal Weapon, Taxi Driver, Clockwork Orange, The Shawkshank Redemtion, Mississippi Burning, The Pianist, Forest Gump, Back to the Future collection, all Bruce Lee movies ever made, The Warriors, Get Shorty, Capote, Revolutionary Road, The Reader, Twister, Walk the Line, Goodbye Lenin, City of God, Amalie, City of Hope, Fight Club, Clockers, Lord of War, Adaptation, Burn After Reading, Shoot ‘Em Up, The Professional, El Mariachi, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill 1 and 2, Sin City, Jackie Brown, Four Rooms, Meet the Parents, B13U, Run Lola Run, Catch Me If You Can, Eyes Wide Shut, Iron Man, Rocky collection, Cliffhanger, Rambo, Pirates of the Caribbean collection, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Sixth Sense, The Siege, The Fifth Element, 16 Blocks, The Truman Show, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Ace Ventura Pet Detective, Dumb and Dumber, Bruce Almighty, Die Hard collection, 12 Monkeys, Bandits, Lucking Number Sleven, The Shining, Dawn of the Dead, Pet Cemetary, The Omen, Amityville Horror, Return of the Living Dead collection, Brain Dead, Death Proof, 1408, The Village, 28 Days Later, Seven, Cloverfield, Eight Legged Freaks, Platoon, Apocalypse Now, Saving Private Ryan, The English Patient, American Gangster, Capone, Once Upon a Time In America, Goodfellas, The Godfather collection, Scarface, Soldier, Star Wars collection, Star Trek (new one), Alien collection, Predator collection, Terminator collection, Indian Jones: Raiders of lost ark, temple of doom, and last crusade, There Will Be Blood, 3:10 to Yuma, Way of the Gun, Flags of Our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima, Million Dolar Baby, City Heat, Unforgivin, Mystic River, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, Fistful of Dollars, The Wild Bunch, Synecdoche New York, There’s Something About Mary, From Dusk Till Dawn, Mars Attacks, Independence Day

And complete TV series…The Wire, Weeds, The Sopranos, Heroes, Dexter, some more…

Time to finish packing now!

THE END

Jocelyn has described tadpoles as marshmallows with tails. You know, they taste really good, and are not particularly good at swimming, big blobs with a little fin at the back, everything likes to eat them. Pretty much marshmallows with tails.

Found this little frog on the road. He was tough, only had three legs, not even adult yet, and trying to stuff a worm four times his size down his throat. It reminded me of Spike.

I made my first sandwich in months, though it probably won’t that look good to those who have access to sandwiches on a regular basis. It took trips to a city an hour away to get supplies for this lunch, and many experiments with different types of oil and a hot plate. And although it was burnt and oily and didn’t taste much like home, it was still delicious, well not delicious, but it wasn’t spicy noodles or rice!

So when I was maybe 9 years old or so I bought a “chubby frog” from Aquarius pet store in Monona. This thing was cool. He sat in a little mud hole all day long, popping out to snag any small insect I threw into his 10 gallon aquarium. One night I woke up to a scream. My chubby frog had escaped, climbed out of his covered cage, under my room door, down the stairs, over carpeted floors, and ended up in my parents bedroom (mom, do you remember this?) He died some years later, but I was always impressed that this seemingly inactive brown blob made it through our entire house in one night.

Now I see them everyday. They’re everywhere, and they don’t just sit in little mud holes. I’ve found them in trees, swimming in water, on plant leaves a meter off the ground, and also in the mud. Here is one I found on a path in the rainforest the other week -

and a few other Microhylids, pretty much miniature versions of the above.

Where have you been? We have spent one month waiting for you, with only an occasional afternoon drizzle to get our hopes up. Well, I am glad you finally made it. Friday and Saturday it rained nearly all day, today it looks nice and cloudy too. This means good frogs!

Leptolalax (ventripunctatus?) This is an unusual frog of which nothing is known about, although they seem to be all over the stream in the rainforest section of the gardens.

We call these “slippery frog” because they are hard to hold onto. Males are larger than females, which is unusual (it’s usually the other way around), and they have giant heads which Jocelyn says they use to battle each other with?

Okay, this is what I came here to see, a real flying frog. Not the little R. bipunctatus I posted before. These are the real deal. They live high up in the canopy where they literally fly from tree to tree (some species have been recorded gliding 80 meters or more!), but during the rainy season, if you’re lucky, you will find one at night venturing down to a pool of water to breed. The rains have come, and I’ve been lucky.

This is a good one too – Philautus menglaensis, a new species to the project. They’re call sounds like a mantella.

And a foam nest. The tree frogs around here make these frothy egg-filled things. They usually put them over water, and then the tadpoles hatch out, dropping down below after a day or two. This one was placed over a mossy rock however, and I watched an unfortunate tadpole fall a good meter from the nest, hit the rock, and then eventually wriggle off the side into the water.

Someone is stealing our artificial breeding sites. We don’t know who. We don’t know why. But all of last week’s work hauling buckets out to different parts of the garden has been lost to the bucket thief.

Some small creatures I caught recently:

They are making me do all the work!

Jocelyn (left) and Brenna (right) pretending to work

A “new frog” (a species we haven’t 100% identified yet). It may appear to be a boring brown frog, but would you believe it does not have free-swimming tadpoles? We found a female full of eggs last night, and if it is indeed Ingerana liui, then she was on the lookout for a male who had dug a little hole in the mud for her to put her eggs in. The eggs then develop in the hole as the male guards them, and out of the eggs hatch tiny miniature frogs instead of tadpoles!

There isn’t a lot of forest left in this part of China because it has been “converted” to rubber plantations. I’m fortunate to work in an area where there is a little left, and in it there are some good frogs. And also 10 inch long killer centipedes!

Sometimes I find myself ignoring common sense, doing the opposite of what I know to be responsible. Like buying a bunch of monkey frogs (Phyllomedusa tomopterna) only weeks before going to China for 4 months. They arrived on Tuesday, in a box marked “Live Perishable Tropical Fish”. The FedEx carrier handed me the package sideways, with the red arrow pointing towards her instead of up. The frogs were okay though, slightly jostled, ready to leave their deli cups. When I return in October they won’t look so delicate, but for now these nickel-sized froglets appear frail, walking on angel hair legs. They don’t jump or hop, but creep, cautiously gripping vines with their fingers like miniature drugged lemurs.