Meet the neighbors III - Shadow

Shadow lives in the dark side, but not Darf Vader's kind.

It belongs to the family of African knife fish. I don't know about its relatives, but Shadow is extremely shy. It hides itself in a cave, or tunnel, or some place that is dark all day. It's as if it's anti-social. To be a little more politically correct, let me just say it's aloof.

I wish I read more about this fish before putting my money down. Why would any hobbyist wants to own a nocturnal fish. That defeats the purpose of having fish in an aquarium, doesn't it? Nobody will wake up in the twilight and try to flash for where this fish is hanging out. In Chinese, we call this "late night ghost," mostly refer to people who are active during nighttime.

Anyway, over a week or so, I thought about the term aquarium. It doesn't exactly reflect why I put the frog in in the first place. I like diversity in this little indoor "pond." I want to see different characters in this neighborhood, which may create argument sometimes, but that's what the world we're living in right now. Culture is a beautiful thing, so why do we need to separate them apart as long as they live in harmony. After all, Shadow doesn't bully others. In fact, it's a good dancer. When it swims, its tail will capture your appreciation of its movement.

The bottom line is if everybody is well-fed, they're happy, they don't ask for more. OK, OK, I'm an Utopian. They're a little bit territorial sometimes. What about Shrek? Well, I've observed long enough for this conclusion: he's not a good fisherman, but a good hunter. So his neighbors are safe.

Calamari tastes really bad? Sure?

You probably disagree, but let me explain.

To many of you, there is only one kind of calamari that tastes really good and I like it a lot too. Am I being an idiot? No! There is another kind that you don't know of really, really, sucks.



In Chinese, Calamari is similar to a dish called "stir fry squid," which is also a saying for "being layoff." Ah ha, now you couldn't agree more.

My mood tonight is on the down side, not so much because of the death of the crab, but the announcement of my seven co-workers who are on the chopping board and seven more on the buyout offering list. Compared with thousands and thousands of workers that have been let go in corporate America in one single day, you may ask what the big deal is here.

These seven positions are in the first wave of layoff, yes, but precedent to this, there have already been four rounds of buyouts which chopped away about 130 (maybe more ) out of about 400 employees in the newsroom alone. Now, you tell me if this is a big deal percentage wise.

Sigh...

Oh, crab!

These days, it doesn't seem there's any good news whatsoever. Other than Obama who has inaugurated as the President of the United States for a week or so, there's basically no one single good news I could cheer about. All I see is only dark clouds. It almost feels like our country is in the center of a hurricane.

Just when I tried to avoid being bombarded by all the headlines by burying myself in Shrek's neighborhood to find some comfort, the unexpected strikes again.

I woke up one morning and found one of the Crabbie twins doing a claw stand. Cool huh! Not really. It didn't move at all. I'm not a detective, but judging from the crime scene, I don't suspect it's a homicide cuz its whole body is still intact. Nobody in the neighborhood is strong enough to make that killing except Shrek. But if it were Shrek, there won't be any remains found, right? I guess I'll have to put it in the file of "Cold Case". If you think there are other suspects, let me know.

Oh crab, rest in peace!

Feeding frenzy

Happy Chinese New Year! It's an OX year in Chinese Zodiac... my year. How old I'm? How about doing a simple math here: (60-48) x5 -12=?

Oh yes, a co-worker hosted a celebration last night with yummy Chinese cuisine that you won't find in even an authentic Chinese restaurant in Minnesota.

The words got out that I'm writing a blog about a frog. Alright, alright, I admit that I promote it heavily in the party. Regardless, I got great response, some with intriguing expressions on their faces as if saying "ahhhhh, a big kid." No offense.

And a kid came up to me asking if I could show her the video of the frog in action. Of course, this is a blog for both kids and adults. Here is a new video of Shrek having a feeding frenzy as well. Enjoy!

Next time, we'll re-visit Crabbie twins, stay tuned.

Feel free to write comments or feed backs.

A silly froggy story

Well actually, I'm not going to tell you the story. Instead, I think you can make up a better silly story than I can offer you. Reason? Your imagination is far better than mine. You are still not convinced? Why don't you try this link, you'll be amazed by how funny you actually are when you finish this froggy story. Just fill out the form with some key words and there you are, a future stand up comedian. Voila!

http://allaboutfrogs.org/funstuff/java/madlibs/madlibs1.html

Meet the neighbors II - Crabbie Twins

Shrek likes food fresh and raw, period. He'll go after anything that moves.

However, the last thing he would like to gobble up would be these two new comers – ladies and gentlemen, the Crabbie twins.

However, even if Shrek is starving, I doubt that he has the gut to go after them. Trying to eat this eight-pointy-legs-and-a-pair-of-heavy-duty-claws creature, Shrek would spit it out in no time. If he did, I would do a C-section to get them out of his belly. Ahhh... maybe not.

Have you ever wonder why crabs don't walk front and back but walk sideways? They are just like a lot of insects with legs on both sides of their bodies, right? Never thought of that before? I don't blame you.

If you put your hand on the table, how will your fingers move? Mostly just bend and bounce them up and down, especially while you are thinking this silly crappy question, right?

Ding ding ding, now you got it! It's their joints that limit the movement of their legs. Since the rotation of each joint max out no more than 180 degrees along the vertical plan but not the horizontal's, they can only move their bodies to the left or right, but not the front and back.

Also, the bending of their legs helps squeezing themselves into holes or crevices that are smaller than their body width to escape predators.

It's fun to watch them walking in the water, isn't it?

Nevertheless, crabs are really tasty, yum yum!

More about these Crabbie twins to come.

Let's play a game!

Recently, I exchange e-mails with a childhood friend whose aunt, also a close half-relative of mine, passed away. I was a little sad, but thinking she had lived a long life, though may not be perfect in some ways, it's time to let her go. She slept in peace.

My friend and I also talked about how much fun we had when we went hunting for critters in picnics or at beaches -- insects, fish, crabs, amphibians, you name it. Yup, those were the days. Something in me will never change. I'm still doing it when I'm on vacation with my kids.

For that reason, I want to give you guys a game to play on Shrek. I want to see if you have hunters' eyes. I have two photos of Shrek's neighborhood and he's hiding, but not 100 percent invisible. If you have a watch, you can time yourself to see how long it takes you to find him.

The answer will be posted at the bottom of the previous post, "Do frogs yawn" later.

Ready? Go.

Do frogs yawn?

I'm not sure.

You'll be the judge after watching Shrek's videos.



Not only is he opening his mouth wide, he's also rubbing his eyes, stretching his legs, not to mention he looks REALLY bored. If it's you and me showing these signs, it's time to hit the sack, isn't it?



And it turns out when a frog looks like it's yawning, it's actually shedding its skin, and they do it quite often when they are in juvenile stage, according to experts. And strangely enough, they would eat their own shed skin to get the nutrients back into their bodies. Nothing get wasted!

Contrarily to frogs, we waste food, we create tons of garbage, we pollute our own planet, and we don't save for the rainy days... the list goes on and on and on...

No, I don't mean to trash homo sapiens, or to suggest that we should live like a saint, I only think we should live responsibly under all circumstances.

Tomorrow, we'll have Obama-elect as our new president, he's going to govern our country with respects and dignity, way way better than Bush. "Anything goes"should be a thing in the past, "We the People" are better than that. Make a pledge to do something good to your neighbor, to your community. Make the country a better place for everybody, as Obama has always embraced in his speeches.

You're yawning now, I know. I'm yawning too, but not shedding my skin, don't worry. Just a sign that I want to go home after work, that's all.


• These are the answers for the post "Let's play a game" above.

Meet the neighbors I - Ben

Shrek has some friends living in the same block.

Let me just call them fishy neighbors. It may take a few posts to introduce all of them.

First, this little guy, Ben, has a few black stripes on the body. Its official name is Botia dario. It's in the loach family. Some people call it Queen loach, some call it Bengal loach. The latter seems to fit its appearance better because it has the stripes like a cat. However, its temperament doesn't suggests it's gentle at all, especially when it comes to feeding. It'll chase its neighbors from one end of the block to the other.

Don't worry, although Ben isn't friendly, he won't hurt others much, he's more like a "paper tiger" instead. His favorite meal? Small snails. When he sucks the snail out of the shell, it'll create some loud "clicking" noise. Interesting, isn't it?

His heritage? He's from the hill streams of Bangladesh.

Deep freeze

For Shrek, he would have been hibernating at the bottom of the lake by now if he was in the wild...

Tonight is probably the coldest night in this winter, -14 F at 9:30 p.m. With wind chill factor, it's more like -25 to -40 F, equivalent to -35 C or so. Well, I choose to live here, so I deal with the cold. I don't complain much about it because I have embraced it since I came here for college almost twenty years ago.

But what chills me tonight is actually the breaking news on Avista, the company that owns my newspaper Star Tribune, filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Well, to our readers, it's breaking news, but to us, we have this in mind for a few months already. Still, it doesn't make it easier for everybody who is still working diligently to make the deadline every night.

I wish I could be like Shrek for a moment, just stop doing nothing and hibernate for a little while. No need to find food. No urge to mate. No worry of anything.

Photo credit: David Joles, my co-worker who shot the photo that ran on our newspaper today.

How about "Shrek"?

The thing is my friend has kept asking what the froggie's name is... Since I don't even know if it's a male or female, I can't give it a name...

However, one way to find out is to wait until Spring time in which a male frog will call (for love) to attract a female. If my froggie doesn't call then, I'm afraid I may have to intervene to find her a Prince frog this Summer.

But for now, let me just assume my frog is a male, and its name is "Shrek." Fair enough!

Photo illustration: Me

Are you annoyed?

I woke up in the middle of the night wondering where the chirping sound coming from, then I realized it was the crickets inside the insect box. I put my ear plugs on, turned around and got back to sleep.

The next morning, the crickets were still chirping and it was getting louder and louder. By just listening to the patterns, there seemed to be two different crickets chirping, one after another. Out of curiosity, I took my camera and taped a closeup video to see how they made the sound.

In animal kingdom, it's always the males dancing around or doing beautiful callings to attract females. The crickets are no different, except there are three other conditions for which they chirp – first, while falling in love. Second, while bullying each other, and finally, alerting others danger approaching.

If you watch the video, you'll know both crickets are rubbing its own wing against the wrinkles on the other wing to make the sound. And you can tell their chirps are aggressively aiming at each other, obviously a power struggle. It's so amusing to see it in a close up.

Misfired!

Well, as good a hunter like my frog, it's not always one hundred percent successful.

One time, I was so proud to show my friends how good a hunter it is, and it misfired three times and I was like an angry football coach yelling at a kicker how he could miss a 10-yard field goal to seal the win in a playoff. What a disgrace when that happens, you know!

This clip is just a perfect example of "when it's too easy, the chance of missing it is not unimaginable." How true!

Quick fix b/4 my vacation

I was on vacation after Christmas for nine days and the two days before my departure, I'd been scratching my head on how I could keep my frog from starving to death... and my girlfriend's idea popped up -- use duct tape to tape the whole insect box on the wall of the aquarium and keep a small opening so that the crickets can climb out onto the grassy area but keeping the frog from going in for a feast. Also, I wrapped the inside of the box with grocery bag paper so that the movement of the crickets won't trigger the frog to knock down the box into the water. Who knows, a desperate frog may take drastic action to survive... better be safe than sorry.

Turned out it was a successful execution. I was back Sunday and the frog was still happy moving around, no sign of stress or hunger. How many crickets were left in the box? One.