Critters, critters, and more critters (Mostly On the road).

Riding a motorbike or driving a tuk tuk is always an adventure in Sri Lanka, made significantly more white-knuckled by the presence of every type of animal you can imagine on, and around the roads. The accepted right-of-way here seems to be that the biggest thing has the right of way, in this order: buses, lorries, cars, tuk tuks, motorbikes, then pedestrians. Except for animals. Animals hold the right-of-way over everything. They are the only thing that drivers here will alter course for (yes, even more than humans). Because of this we have been at the bottom of the pecking order since we have been riding a motorbike here, and it has been a full time job to avoid all the hazards. Add to that riding at night, with a ton of kite gear all over the motorbike, dodging the millions of potholes, and it is amazing that we haven’t crashed yet (Shit. Jinxed it. Knock on wood now).

Now we have a tuk tuk, so we have moved up from last to second-last!

We do still have to avoid all of these animals though.

There are also animals everywhere else: on the porch, the grass, the beach, in our bed, and in our tuk tuk. And, yes, a good number of these animals need to be avoided as well. They are there either to be stepped on (leading to guilty feelings) or to bite you, kick you, or trip you (and sometimes all of this at once).

Crows everywhere. Surprisingly, these guys have outcompeted the pigeons here, and there are no pigeons to be found anywhere. They are brownish in color, and smaller overall, with much bigger beaks. The Sri Lankan (Sinhala) name for them is a Ca Ca, so the silly birds are constantly referring to themselves in the first person.

Some days you just have to have morning coffee with a one legged crow named Peg Leg Pete.

Puppies everywhere.

Road donkeys.

Yard donkeys, and Tam.

Porch donkeys, and Me.

These are all wild donkeys, of their own subspecies, and they are protected by the government. No-one can capture them, or use them for domestic purposes. There are a ton of them. By last count there were over six hundred in Mannar alone, which is a small section of the area we are in. I heard estimates of as many as three thousand in total between Mannar, and where we are at in Kalpitiya. They are tough, scrappy little things, subsisting on the most meager feed and on the goodness of the local people. They are fed by many locals, and so have become very comfortable around people, both on porches or in the road. Or, in many cases, they can be found in the yard. With Tam.

There are millions of crabs on the beaches here, and a bunch of different species, but I thought this one was the cutest one. It must be an endangered species, as we have only been able to find just this one of its species in all of Sri Lanka.

A road cow. One of so, so many wandering bovinely about, dragging a rope from their neck, with the other end attached to nothing in particular.

These free-range road goats are everywhere as well. They seem to have owners, but they are really left to their own devices. I usually just call them “picture frame goats” because they all have this triangular frame around their necks. The owners put the frame on them to keep them from sneaking through fences and destroying people’s yards and gardens. Those frames often get scarily close to the surfboard rack on our motorbike as we drive by, because the little buggers will barely move aside as you drive by.

There are bunches of these guys here. Tam tried to organize some dung beetle races, but it didn’t go so well:the beetles just rolled their balls of poo away and hid.

I love watching these guys. It amazes me how perfectly round they can form a ball out of old, dry poop, and how fast they can roll it while upside down and backwards.

Because so many of our interactions with the local wildlife is from the motorbike or tuk tuk, while driving, or at some weird time when we don’t have a camera (or when they sneak up on you in the dark) there is a whole cast of characters that have not been caught on camera.

Some of them include, in no particular order:

Weasels (way too quick to get a picture of).

Monitor lizards (big ones).

Hermit crabs (we are arranging hermit crab races tonight at our kite school).

Big furry spider (this one kept trying to attack me, so fighting for my life rather than trying to get a picture).

Fish (one species of which bites your feet badly enough to take a chunk out of your skin if you stand still too long in the lagoon).

Cats (very occasionally).

Tortoise ( a really beautiful one that peed the most foul-smelling brown liquid all over Tam when she picked it up).

Rats (not as many as you may think).

Chipmunks (surprised by this one).

Toads (there is one that hops through our place at the same time every night).

Snakes (the “big five” poisonous ones here are not to be messed with. There are many other, less dangerous, ones also).

Birds (lots and lots of birds. So many birds, and no pictures of them).

And fleas (the biggest, most gigantic, super-fleas you have ever seen weighing down a dog).