The Life of Zoë

"I think we are drawn to dogs because they are the uninhibited creatures we might be if we weren't certain we knew better. They fight for honor at the first challenge, make love with no moral restraint, and they do not for all their marvelous instincts appear to know about death. Being such wonderfully uncomplicated beings, they need us to do their worrying."

Troubles With Bird Dogs and
What to Do About Them (1975)

by George Bird Evans 

The day after Benji's tragic and untimely end, Cheryl visited the local animal shelter where we rescued him in search of some solace. Was it too soon? Probably, but there is no salve for loss as soothing as the replacement of the very thing we lost. That is not to say that Benji is so easily replaceable, but we had so much love for him that it would be a shameful waste to direct every ounce of it to grief. Instead we sought to give that love to another creature which deserves it, if only because it is still alive.

On 23rd of August, exactly three days after Benji's passing, we brought a new puppy home.

At the shelter.

On the way back, Cheryl christened her Zoë, apropos of nothing. When I looked it up later, I found that it is Greek and it means "life" or "alive", which is thought is delightful serendipity. There is nothing more antithetical to the deathly, funereal pall that have settled over our family than bounding, barking, warm, furry life. We needed this. I needed this.

Zoë, in her crate, in the middle of crate training.

Zoë was very different from Benji, both in personality and temperament. To get the most obvious things out of the way first, she was female and was only about 2 months old (compared to 4 months old male Benji). While Benji was calm, confident and deliberate, Zoë was a firecracker - a wilful, hyperactive little bitch. The only time Benji got really excited was when he saw the cats, which he would chase in delight. Zoë however, have never shown any sign of noticing her feline housemates' existence at all. House training her was a more strenuous affair because of her weak puppy bladder so I was forced to wake up every 2 hours at night to let her water (or fertilise) the garden.

While Benji happily accepted his usual mealtime kibbles as training treats, Zoë proved to be a fussy, picky customer. She wouldn't even touch her dry puppy kibbles unless I mix it up with a spoonful of meaty wet food first. And since training treats have to be equal to or more "valuable" than her usual feed, I was forced to train her only at mealtimes, giving her spoonfuls of her food for each time she complied with commands. Eventually, I resorted to baking chicken liver for this purpose and thankfully, she deemed it a worthy enough payment in exchange for tricks.

Sophie, already plotting Zoë's downfall from day one.

Fortunately, with a bit of persistence, she was house trained and became "accident-free" within 3 days and could even hold it in through the night. Within a week, she learned to sit and lie down on command. She could even stand on her two hind legs for 1 to 2 seconds when asked, a trick I could never get Benji interested in.

Last Friday, a day before my son's one year old birthday, Zoë died. If this came as a rude surprise as you are reading this, it's because it was for us too.

Pretty girl.

On Thursday, 4th of September, Cheryl went to take her out for her evening toilet visit but noticed that there was something very wrong with her. I saw that she was holed up inside her crate and stood up, wagging her tail when I approached. However, I noted that she was not leaving her little sanctuary like she usually did. I peered inside and noticed that she was leaning on her left, her left wrist slack and floppy.

I reached in for her but she freaked out and scrabbled backwards, something she had never done. She had a sweet, outgoing and confident disposition, and had never displayed any neuroses prior to this. I carried her out gingerly and placed her on the floor to get a better look at her - and she immediately panicked and began running in circles, persistently falling to her left. She was also drooling like a faucet. I studied human medicine, but what Zoë exhibited were unmistakably neurological symptoms. But why? Cheryl just took her out a few hours prior but she was perfectly fine! The only thing that happened that day to her was her 2nd ivermectin jab, which she was on because she brought mange home with her from the shelter which had left her mostly bald with lots of sores from scratching (quite unlike her pictures here), but was otherwise completely well and active. We fully expected her to recover from it.

We rushed her to a nearby vet who found that her pupils were also dilated and she was exhibiting what he called "knuckling" where Zoë's doesn't notice when her paws were placed in odd, uncomfortable positions - indicating a loss of proprioception. He diagnosed her with ivermectin toxicity, gave her a shot of corticosteroids and a bolus of subcutaneous fluid between her shoulders because she was not eating or drinking. The vet also gave me a syringe loaded with diazepam, in case she started fitting that night. And that night, I learned practically everything there is to know about ivermectin sensitivity in dogs, how it afflicts certain dog breeds that happen to carry the MDR-1 gene defect which impairs a dog's ability to transport certain compounds out of their brains, leading to a build up. I slept in the living room as well so I could hear it if Zoë starts fitting. I fed her some of her favourite wet dog food from a can using a spoon, and was heartened to see that she could still lick it up and swallow. Her tail still wagging like a windmill, which I understand doesn't necessarily meant that she was happy. When I carried her down to the garden to pee, she could still do her half-crouch.

We brought her back to the vet the next morning as advised but found that Zoë's condition worsened. She had started making chewing movements with her mouth. The vet look at that odd behaviour thoughtfully and then swabbed some of the tears streaming out of her eyes, pipetting some of it onto a plastic cartridge that resembles a urine pregnancy test. He showed it to me and told me that it was an antigen test for canine distemper. One very bold line showed on it.

"One line," I said. "That's good news right?"

"That is the 'test' line you are seeing. The 'control' line have yet to appear, but you can see it forming faintly now," he said sadly.

Oh no...

Now all my confusion made sense. Why Zoë did not react to the first ivermectin shot, why she was suddenly struck with very severe generalised mange - which indicated that her immune system was failing. "But she already received her 1st shot of vaccination!" I told the vet but I knew the answer before he even answered. She had contracted it at the shelter before she was vaccinated, and the virus must have been incubating till now.

I am a doctor myself and I knew that we were at a crossroads of hard decisions. "When should we give up?" I asked calmly.

"When she fits non-stop," he told me. "Or when she is completely unable to eat or drink."

By noon, Zoë was a shambles of her former self; blind, highly nervous and likely delirious. Her jaws have started locking up and it was difficult for me to pry them apart and syringe some food into her mouth. Cheryl received word from the shelter that Zoë's litter mates have also started displaying signs of distemper two days ago, which pretty much proved that Zoë was exposed to the canine distemper virus before we took her home. She was a time bomb ticking to heartbreak, but we were completely unaware. I did more reading (as I am wont to do in times of crises) but the more I read, the more hopeless it seemed, and Zoë, at this point, had deteriorated to a state where she couldn't even crouch to urinate. It just dribbled out as she stood there seemingly oblivious to her own bladder movement. Finally, Cheryl and I decided on what we felt was right: we decided to put Zoë to sleep.

We took her back to the vet, who seemed to have been expecting us. This time, we were directed to a different room and in the middle of it was a large stainless steel table. We were asked to sign some papers and after we gave Zoë her last pets, the vet gave her a lethal dose of pentobarbitone - and just like a robot powering down, she slumped down gently onto the table surface, her head flopped to one side unnaturally. The room filled with the smell of faeces as whatever that remained in Zoë's rectum oozed out. Cheryl cried. I was too numb to follow suit. After a minute, the vet checked her for any signs of life and finding none, asked us if we would like him to dispose of her for us.

"No thanks," I said. "We are taking Zoë home with us."

The orderly there offered us a plastic bag - and we refused because it just didn't seem right. I put her back in her crate and drove her back to our house. There, I dug her a grave beside Benji's, and after wrapping her in the blanket she always slept on, buried her with her bright blue collar. I comforted myself with the thought that at least Zoë did not suffer long and had spent her last hours with people who loved her most instead of a cold, harsh metal cage at the animal shelter. In the last two weeks, she ate better than she ever had in her life and had toys (and feet) to chew. Her weight almost doubled under our care. We did everything right by her and told ourselves was not our fault she was already doomed from the get go.

But it was still painful as hell.



Zoë's human,
k0k s3n w4i

I Killed My Dog

"All his life he tried to be a good person. Many times, however, he failed. For after all, he was only human. He wasn't a dog."

Charles M. Schulz

"I want a dog," Cheryl said and that made me realise that I wanted one too. The last time I had a dog was when I was 14 years old - and that was 14 years ago. My dad brought home a brown Cocker Spaniel when I was 11 but now I wish he didn't. I was expected to be responsible, to care for another living being on my own but unfortunately, I was just a stupid kid with two escaped adult hamsters, a litter of dead hamster pups and half a dozen tortoise carcasses on his permanent record. I was clearly not ready and predictably, that poor little spaniel lived its short miserable life in the driveway of my grandmother's house, its long beautiful curly fur in mats with a thousand grey bloated ticks draining its life blood. I also failed to train him and sometimes, I even made him jump at neighbourhood kids I didn't like to terrorise them.

One day, when my mother picked me up from school, she told me that my dog was dead. I was told he chose a nice sunny spot beneath a jackfruit tree in front of my grandmother's house earlier that morning and went to sleep forever. He was just 3 years old. My mother took me to a large deserted bridge connecting the mainland with a man-made island called Pulau Melaka and had me dump my dog's body right into the sea with my own two hands.

"I hate animals," my mother told me. "But if you had let me know that the dog was sick, I would have taken him to the vet for you."

But I didn't know. I had no idea because I was just a stupid kid and my stupidity and irresponsibility killed Pixel. Pixel was the name I gave him. That name is a stain upon my conscience; a badge of shame and regret that have followed me all my life since.

Now at 28, I am twice as old as I was when I lost Pixel. We have a baby fast approaching his 1st birthday and two mostly intact cats, and we just moved into big house with an even bigger garden. I thought there was no better time to give myself a second chance.

So, Cheryl, Darwin and I went to the local animal shelter together to look for the newest member of our little pack and that's where we found this little white puppy sitting in his cramped cage atop his own excrements - and even though he had every reason to be miserable, he wasn't. He came right up to the side of the cage to sniff at my fingers and lick them, his tail wagging up to nines. Having spent the last two years being licked by Sophie's sandpaper feline-tongue, the softness of his tongue surprised and delighted me.

But he wasn't a good looking pup. He was recovering from a bad case of mites and had bald patches all over his body. His large bat-like ears were completely hairless and flea-bitten. Besides, I was also worried because he looked a tad too old - about 4 months old - and I read that the older a pup starts training... well, old dogs, new tricks, y'know.

We also saw a trio of pups in another cage which looked far healthier but Cheryl said, "Those cute ones will get adopted." And we might very well be the only chance that that hairless little dog had to leave the shelter so we did what felt right. We took that sweet but mangy-looking pup back home and on the drive back, I christened him Benjamin Sabrecat.

Or "Benji", as we came to know and love him.

4 days before we brought Benji home, we went and applied Frontline® on him.

Benji given his last bath at the shelter by Cheryl before we took him home.

I was determined to do right by Benji in a way that I never did for Pixel. Before bringing Benji home, I studied several dog care and training books to make sure I was truly ready this time. Cheryl thought I was being obsessive but she didn't know just how much this meant to me. Quite early on, I was determined that Benji would not be sleeping out-of-doors so that meant house-training needed to be instituted pronto. Every 3 hours, I would take Benji out into the yard to eliminate and learn where his toilet was suppose to be and I somehow managed to stuck to it, even waking up in the middle of the night at 3AM just to take Benji out for him to make his little doggy deposits back to nature. There were a couple of oopsies in the beginning which necessitated some vigorous cleaning (and cursing) but in less than one week, Benji got the hang of it! I was ecstatic. It felt like I was finally doing something right.

But I can't take all the credits for myself because Benji was, we believed, no ordinary dog. He was very smart and empathetic. We thought night-time whining would be a problem but he ceased that on the first night after only a few shushes. In the same week he was house-trained, he quickly learned to sit, shake paws and lie down on command as well. Initially, he barked and bounded after our two cats but he quickly stopped doing that as well after realising that his overenthusiastic approach would only draw disapproving hisses from me (and the cats). He was gentle with Darwin and never leapt up around him as dogs are wont to do when they are playful and excited. Benji was so responsive, so eager to please, so perfect. I cannot even begin to describe how proud I was of him.

My favourite memory of him was last Sunday when we spent some time together in our yard as a family. I was weeding the garden while Darwin frolicked in his inflatable pool filled with colourful plastic balls. Benji was let off leash and he went to and fro between checking Darwin out from the side of the pool and watching me work quietly without getting in the way at all. His fur had begun to grow out and his ears were covered in a new growth of white fuzz. It looked like he was going to turn out to be a handsome dog after all. Cheryl took pictures, so we we will always have Sunday.

Family.

Last Wednesday, I came home during lunchtime because I forgot my phone and while I was there, I let Benji out in the yard and after he watered the grass, I noticed his reluctance in stepping back into the house. It was a beautiful afternoon so I thought, what the heck, I would let Benji enjoy his day in the sun a little longer and reminded Cheryl to bring him in again at 3PM. Then, I busied myself hanging up some bird feeders I put together clumsily on a couple of trees in the bottom of the garden. The last glimpse of Benji I had was him going right down to the woods that bordered the edge of our garden to poop. "Attaboy," I thought to myself.

After a short nap, I left home to return back to work in my car. I went to the surgical ward to interview an alcoholic who was brought in because he vomited blood and was having the shakes, and after that, I dropped by at the clinic to assess an old Malay lady who was referred to me for dementia (she wasn't - the referring doctor screwed up the ECAQ). That was when I received a call from Cheryl. She was weeping piteously on the other side. It was wrong. She shouldn't be crying. There was no reason for her to... Oh no... No no no no no no no...

"He's not moving," she told me through her sobs. "There is so much blood. He's dead. Benji's DEAD."

I don't know how but I knew immediately what had happened. It felt as if I had fallen into a deep, dark pool of unreality and its chill had frozen my mind in rigid disbelief. I automatically told Cheryl to calm down, hung up and concluded my session with the not-demented old lady. Then, I went to my Head of Department to ask permission to return home early, which he granted after I told him what had happened. On my drive home, I raced through all the rooms in my head and rifled through all the drawers, searching for a memory, a clue, an explanation for this crazy living nightmare I am living through... and I just lost it. I broke down at the wheel and cried my heart out. I cried for Benji. I cried for Pixel. I was a little boy who lost his dog all over again.

When I got home, I espied a metre-long monitor lizard crouching in the grass and staring greedily at my driveway. What it was eyeing was a small, white, furry body lying on the concrete floor in a large, thick pool of congealing blood. On its fur, I could see the black marks where the car tires made their cruel prints on him. There was a trail of feces coming out of Benji's rear end, telling me that he crawled about a feet, shitting uncontrollably in his death throes before he stopped moving. The blood clots were disturbed, which meant that Benji was alive for at least a few minutes - maybe up to an hour - before his suffering ended. I can't imagine what he could be thinking in his last moments or how much pain he must have endured before he could finally rest. He would have been so confused, so alone at a time he needed his family the most, and the thought just breaks my heart.

I killed my dog. I couldn't believe it. I did this. I am a murderer. Benji slept under the car and I drove over him, not even knowing what I did as I was doing it. At that time, I thought I would go mad from the guilt.

It was almost 5PM so I told Cheryl to pick Darwin up from daycare. I would deal with Benji, I mumbled even though I was having trouble knowing where to begin. I took his collar off and wrapped his little broken body in the blanket he usually sleeps on before carrying him to the forest bordering our garden. There, between a clump of banana trees and a bamboo grove, I dug Benji's grave with a trowel and a weeding fork. I don't know why it mattered but I remember thinking that I should dig a hole big enough for him to lie down in.

Before Cheryl left, she came to me to hand me Benji's red collar and the small aluminium candy box I kept his treats in.

"He owns the collar," she told me fiercely. "This means he has a family and not abandoned. Give it to him. Let him wear it."

And I did. I put his collar around his neck for the last time and nestled his treat box by his side before putting him back into the earth. Then, I went inside and cried into my hands until my head hurt. Till now, I am still seeing flashes of his motionless tiny body in the driveway throughout the day and I still feel my heart race every time I put my car in reverse. I kept replaying the day's event in my mind, wondering what little things I could have done differently so that innocent, blameless Benji wouldn't need to die such a violent, lonely death. There was a million things and one, and I missed every single one of them. If only I have brought him back in instead of leaving him outside. If only I put a chain on him when he was out. If only I didn't forget to take my phone to work, causing me to return during lunchtime to retrieve it. If only I looked for him before I backed my car out of the driveway. It was a bottomless spiral of what-ifs and if-onlies; so many chances were there for me to save him that I can scarcely believe he could even have died.

Goodbye, Benji. I will miss our walks late at night, your soft gentle licks and your huge floppy ears. You were a good dog.

You were too good for me.

You will always be family, Benji. I am so sorry.

Benji exploring our backyard.

Benji's first visit to the vet for his kennel cough which he picked up from his time at the shelter. He was told to sit so he did. It was less than a week after he came home with us.

An already house-trained Benji pooping outdoors.

Benji meeting and greeting the other baby of the house for the first time.

Benji and Darwin on our last Sunday together.

Darwin, Benji and me.

Murderer,
k0k s3n w4i

My Return to Santubong

"Gonna goose that goose
Gonna quack that swan
Gonna rubber my duckie all night long
Gonna whack that Mallard
Until its feathers plume
Gonna Huey Dewey Louie all over the room
Scrooge McDuck, gonna give it to you
Dive into your gold until you say
DuckTales, whoo hoo!"

Sex with Ducks (2010) by Garfunkel and Oates

On April 20 last month, I went back to Santubong to see if my stamina have improved since my last ascent because I have been climbing some mountain or other every week since the beginning of this year in preparation for my trek up to the lofty Pinnacles at Mulu National Park on the 12th of May - which, as the more observant would notice, is a matter of history by now and I would bore you with those details in good time.

Anyway, just to quickly summarise my most recent Santubong climb: I entered the mountain using the Bukit Putri trail this time which many have said to be a more pleasant trek and boy, was it ever! The forest is sparser and less oppressive on that trail and it closely skirts one of Santubong's ridges, so there was almost always fresh air. All in all, I passed two groups of hikers on my way up while a Eurasian man overtook me. It took me about 2 hours and 50 minutes to reach the summit, beating my previous time by about an hour (which isn't saying a lot since the Bukit Putri trail is known to be easier). The real difference I noticed was that I didn't feel any aches or soreness in my body after this outing. Following my previous climb, I couldn't walk up a single step of stairs without my thighs screaming like the souls of the damned. That infused me with a not-insubstantial amount of confidence boost, ceasing my regard of my impending Pinnacles climb as a suicide mission.

This time, missing the constant threat of expiring from the exertion, I was able to pay more attention to the bugs and other small creatures that make Santubong their home. A fellow trekker told me that once, he even saw a hornbill in flight hereabouts - which would be such a treat if it happened on any one of my hikes! Also since I made such good time, I could afford to spend about 2 and a half hours loitering on Santubong's summit and even took a restorative nap.

So with that out of the way, here are the pictures I took this time,

A male Common Iora (Aegithina tiphia) right at the beginning of my hike.

A section of the Bukit Putri trail before it joins the common summit trail. There's always a cliff to the right.

Rope ladders on the latter half of the hike. It's higher than it looks in this picture.

A bust of Datuk Merpati, the superhuman founder of Santubong.

The gazebo at the top of Santubong, currently being occupied by some assholes from a silat (local martial arts) school who don't understand the concept of public property. They even collected bottles of their urine inside, for some reason or other.

I was not joking about the pee.

A choking, smoking plastic fire they left burning untended for whatever bugfuck fancy that have crossed violence-addled minds. I put it out using water from a nearby well, to the applause of other hikers. The vegetation on Santubong is already so dry. All it takes is one stray spark to barbecue the entire mountain!

The gross looking well I mentioned earlier.

Brunch! "Made with chocolate, pretzels, peanut butter, caramel and peanut."

A Common Three-ring (Ypthima pandocus) with folded wings, showing its underside. The "three rings" refer to number of ocelli on the underside of one hindwing, as seen here.

Another Y. pandocus showing its upperside.

A Painted Jezebel (Delias hyparete diva) feeding from a flower.

An unidentified brown skink skittering nervously around the peak.

Southwest view. Click for larger view.

East view. Click for larger view.

A Swiss jerk smoking near me without asking me if I was okay with it.

A tiny, green grasshopper with striped hindlegs. I still suck at identifying them.

A pretty Common Bluebottle (Graphium sarpedon) feeding.

Another G. sarpedon that wouldn't even stop fluttering while feeding.

Looks like a Blue Helen (Papilio prexaspes) sunning itself on a leaf.

A peek at the other peak of Santubong which I was told was inaccessible.

A moth from the Nygmiini tribe. Likely Nygmia sp. or Rhypotoses sp..

View from Santubong about halfway down the mountain.

My first ever snapshot of the very loud jade-green cicada (Dundubia vaginata). I kept hearing them when I was hiking at Bukit Serumbu and Kubah National Park (where I took a recording of their shrill, soulless, almost-mechanical tymbalisation). It's good to actually see one. The picture quality left much to be desired though.

Here's a profile shot of another D. vaginata. They always creep to the other side of their trees whenever I approach them and if I get too close, they will buzz away to another tree.

View of the sea and Satang Besar Island near the entrance of the Bukit Putri trail.

An unencumbered view of Mount Santubong from Kampung Santubong located at its foothills. Majestic, no?

The beach at Kampung Buntal, a fishing village near Mount Santubong. Yonder lies the peninsula that hosts the Bako National Park. The building on stilts to the far left of this picture is a seafood restaurant called Lim Hock Ann.

The interior of Lim Hock Ann seafood restaurant. It quickly filled with customers shortly after this picture was taken.

When I first visited Sarawak in 2005, I was treated to some strange vegetable by my friend's mom at his house. I was told that the vegetable is called "midin", a fern known by the scientific name of Stenochlaena palustris. I fell in love with it instantly and insisting on ordering it for every single meal after that. One can even say that it was the reason why I decided to apply to Sarawak for Housemanship training in the first place.

A sweet and sour jellyfish, sesame and peanut salad that I adored when I first had it here in Lim Hock Ann in 2005.

A deep-fried threadfin fillet. Also known as ikan kurau in Malay. Served with a slice of lime.

Loves, loves, loves midin,
k0k s3n w4i

Retracing Wallace's Trail at Bukit Serumbu

"But whether there be a God and whatever be His nature; whether we have an immortal soul or not, or whatever may be our state after death, I can have no fear of having to suffer for the study of nature and the search for truth, or believe that those will be better off in a future state who have lived in the belief of doctrines inculcated from childhood, and which are to them rather a matter of blind faith than intelligent conviction."

Alfred Russel Wallace

In a letter to his brother.

Panorama of mist-shawled Bukit Serumbu from Kampung Peninjau.

I first heard about "Wallace Trail" from Ashraf who accompanied me on my hike up Mount Santubong earlier this year on the 31st of January and I had been intrigued by it ever since. A bit of Google-fu revealed to me that it lays on an elevated piece of real estate 446 to 488 metres high (depending on what source you use) that is called Bukit Serumbu, Bung Muan or Peninjau (depending on who you ask). It consists of a single massive lump of porphyry diorite rock with very little old growth forest covering it as it had been a site of habitation for the local Bidayuh since time immemorial. Knowing of its existence, of course, meant that I must climb it.

I started my hike at about 8:00 in the morning (13th of April) from its starting point in Kampung Peninjau armed with some energy bars, two large bottles of fluids and a simple diagram of the trail which I photographed at the front of the Visitors' Info Centre.

They don't seem to be able to decide on whether to call it a Visitors Info Centre or a Tourist Info Centre.

The Bori Guna or "Skull Hut" is the first landmark you'll encounter. It appears to be some sort of local shrine.

The hazards of venturing into the wilderness at so early an hour included stepping stones along the trail that are still slippery with dew and pesky mosquitoes, but I enjoy taking a walk in a jungle when the cold of the previous night still lingers before it gets replaced by the malarial heat of Borneo. The trail was not very clearly marked, but someone seemed to have dropped pieces of scrap paper along it to mark their ascent - so followed the paper trail I did. Large boulders littered the path up, lots of them featuring uncannily smooth cracks and splits. One of these cleft rocks, the batu tikopog, is actually a feature of the trail.

Yeap, you are suppose to walk through the cleft. And you can see some of the paper scraps marking the trail in this picture.

The view at batu tikopog. Note the altocumulus clouds in the sky.

In The Malay Archipelago (1869) by Alfred Russel Wallace, in his account of his time spent here at Bukit Serumbu, he wrote about dem rocks too,

"Huge boulders, as big as the houses themselves, rise among them, and hang over them in the most extraordinary manner. Every one is a picturesque object stained with lichens, and on the shady side covered with mosses, while the tops are generally more are less clothed with curious ferns and orchids."

The natural second leg of the trek after batu tikopog takes you through a gently-inclined walk through some bamboo grooves and it had to be the most pleasant part of the climb. Dry, rustly bamboo leaves carpeted the ground while rays of sunlight streamed in from between the bamboo trunks (or "stalks", since some Grammar/Botany Nazis will argue that bamboos are phylogenetically grass).

Through the bamboo groves.

Anyway, it would be amiss of me to not feature some of the faunae I encountered on my retracing of a famous naturalist's footsteps here on Serumbu. Here they are,

A frequently seen Vestalis sp. with and emerald body and shimmery blue wings.
Without a good, hard look at its anal appendages, I can't pinpoint the species.

The horny ass of an orange, yellow and black curved spiny spider (Gasteracantha arcuata).

A cup-shaped Cookeina sp. mushroom from the Sarcoscyphaceae family of cup fungi.

A curled up polydesmid millipede.

Another millipede from the polydesmida order. This one was just taking a stroll through the leaf litter.

A unidentified grey-green spiny grasshopper with an orange streak on its back.

A Bothrobelum rugosum curled up in a defensive position like an armadillo.

The B. rugosum is a pill millipede, of course.

I have discussed about how one can distinguish pill millipedes
from pill bugs in my post about climbing Mount Penrissen.

This B. rugosum is the same one in the previous picture.

A rather battered looking male Striped Blue Crow (Euploea mulciber) on the ground.

A Straight-banded Fivering or Malayan Six Ring (Ypthima fasciata torone) perched on some greenery.

A pretty scratched-up Horsfield's Baron (Tanaecia iapis) basking on a leaf.

The Rajah Cave or Ngiroyan Raja - which is more of a massive overhanging boulder than an actual cave - marks a sort of halfway point on the trail and it looks to be a frequently used camp site with bamboo pallets built beneath its shade.

The Rajah Cave.

Right round a corner, the villagers have installed a couple of dirt basic privies complete with porcelain squat toilets planted right onto the ground. I did not try them out but I strongly suspect that there were no actual plumbing attached.

A pair of privies. A couple of commodes. A twin of toilets.

Looks like the last bloke who went here had trouble digesting cellulose.

Almost immediately after that, the incline rose to a steeper 30 to 40° rope-assisted trudge, and I found myself missing my gloves which I left in my car at the base of the mountain. It was no more than a warm-up compared to what Mount Santubong has to offer, but it definitely topped Mount Serapi for a workout.

The trail after Rajah Cave.

A lookout point a short while before the top. Click to enlarge.

At about 11:00AM, I arrived at the well-shaded top ridge of Serumbu where I saw my very first wild pitcher plant in all my time in Borneo (though I would see millions more in my later trip to Bako National Park, but that's another post for another day). Maybe I haven't been observant or gone out enough, but I am a tad embarrassed by this gaping hole in my Bornean experience, having lived in Sarawak for two and a half years by now.

A nest of Nepenthes ampullaria upper pitchers dangling from its climbing stems.

Pitcher plants are known to produce two types of pitchers - the lower and the upper pitchers - and apparently, the upper pitchers of the ampullaria are said to be extremely rare and had only been seen a few time. It was thought that they only produce them when they are placed under great environmental duress, so it was quite a cool sight. All the other pitchers I encountered after this were lower ones.

Nepenthes ampullaria is also quite morphologically distinct being urceolate or urn-shaped in appearance, so it is difficult to confuse with another member of the Nepenthes genus. Also, unlike other pitcher plants which have a stronger commitment to carnivory, ampullaria's diet consists of whatever it is that falls into its pots - dead leaves, faeces, the occasional animal, et cetera. You can see that in its reduced and reflexed lid that leave the pitcher's opening wide open. Their lids also have far reduced numbers of nectar glands (sometimes absent completely) which in other Nepenthes species play a crucial role in baiting insects.

Of course, they are by no means picky and insects do still fall in from time to time.

Dead mosquitoes inside a N. ampullaria's lower pitcher.

A single lower pitcher of N. ampullaria.

A developing N. ampullaria lower pitcher.

Aside from the abundance of N. ampullaria pitchers, the path of the summit ridge was also practically covered every inch of the way by spider webs built by innumerable, tiny spiders so arachnophobes should stay the hell away from this place. Every step I took destroyed several of the tiny silken traps the spiders painstakingly wove onto the ground.

Two unidentified spiders with metallic markings scurrying away from my huge, destructive feet.

An unidentified tiny, shiny scarlet bug seen at the top of Mount Serumbu.

It wasn't long until I arrived at the base of an oblong boulder aimed at the sky over a precipitous cliffside on the southwest side of the mountain. The path sort of ended here, so I assumed that this must be the summit of Serumbu (though the lack of obvious signage left me with some doubt). Against my better judgment, I crawled up that huge stone to get a better view.

The boulder at the end of the trail.

The groovy surface of the boulder.

The southwestern view from the maybe-summit of Bukit Serumbu.

Climbing down is the hard part.

When I had enough of pretending to be Simba posing atop of my mini Pride Rock, I started scaling down from the monolith - noticing that the base of it also teeters at the edge of another drop. Should I slip on the descent, I would be riding on a one way train to Deadtown or Cripplesville. It didn't look like a place where my corpse would be discovered any time soon either.

Anyway, I evidently got down with my viscera still enclosed within my flabby corporeal self, more or less, or I wouldn't be blogging about this now.

After a quick lunch of some energy bars I packed with me on this outing, I began my leisurely walk down Bukit Serumbu. I was in no real hurry to go anywhere and I still have quite a lot of juice left in my camera's battery.

A brown grasshopper camouflaged against the dead bamboo leaf litter by the site of Brooke's Cottage (more on that in my next post)

A male Common Archduke (Lexias pardalis borneensis) resting on the forest floor.

The plainer and browner spotty female counterpart of the L. pardalis.

A spiny orb-weaver that looks very much like Hasselt's spiny spider (Gasteracantha hasselti).

A close-up of the same G. hasselti.

A less-than-pristine specimen of Xanthotaenia busiris or Yellow-banded Nymph.
Probably the Bornean burra subspecies.

About halfway down, I was treated to a familiar cacophony that I encountered previously at the Kubah National Park - the ear-splitting tymbalisation of jade-green cicadas (Dundubia vaginata). Like previously, they reached a crescendo at about 1:00PM but tried as I could, I was unable to approach one closely enough to photograph it. Of course, at the time I am writing this, I have already remedied that deficiency twice over: once on a repeat climb of Santubong and more recently, during my one week at the Mulu National Park. I will tell more in my forthcoming posts about those expeditions.

Even at my unhurried pace, I reached the base of the mountain after just two hours, and that includes the time I took poking around the historical site where the Brooke Cottage once stood. As with my trek up the mountain, I did not meet a single other trekker on my way down, which suits me just fine. I don't like people very much. As my past history with meeting people on mountain trails can attest, they tended to do stunningly selfish and inconsiderate things like smoke cigarettes in my presence without even asking me if I am okay with it. Did they think that I wasn't trekking for my own health? Or that I have no inclinations in enjoying the clean mountain air which I spend hours trying to access?

Still, I hope that the flow of pilgrims coming to Bukit Serumbu to retrace Wallace's steps would remain a trickle. It isn't everyday that one can claim an entire mountain of solitude for himself, you know.



RELATED POST: The Mismanagement of Alfred Russel Wallace's Heritage in Sarawak



Treading on natural history,
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