the fauna of oshima (8/07/2007)

hello again,

Upon first arriving in Oshima I think the thing that first struck me regarding its native fauna was how freaking huge the crows are!  Maybe it's not that they are extremely large though, perhaps it's simply that they are so numerous and are less scared of people.  One night I was in my house and I heard them cawing pretty loudly so I opened the door and looked out to find three of them perched on the railing about 15 feet to my right.  They looked at me and then flew away.  This probably would have been much less creep if I wasn't the only person that lived in my apartment block.  It's two stories with a row of five single-person apartments on each floor and not a single one of them is occupied except for my very own.  At least I live on the second floor.

To be honest though I don't really mind the crows, creepy as they are sometimes.  That's because crows eat insects, and insects are what I was most worried about when I came here.  There are two types that I was specifically warned about: cockroaches and mukade (mu-ka-de).  Cockroaches I was worried about simply because I didn't want to have any in my house.  Nasty!  But apparently having cockroaches is almost okay in a way because it would supposedly mean you don't have any mukade, poisonous Japanese centipedes that eat cockroaches.  I'm not sure how much stock I put in that logic, since I feel like an abundant food source would just attract predators, but then I'm not much of an
ecologist anyhow.

Maybe there's something to it though, because I'm almost positive I don't have any cockroaches...  The other night I went to bed early and was sound asleep when I felt something on my ear.  I swiped it off and immediately bolted to my feet, completely awake, and hit the lights.  I didn't see it at first, but after moving my futon mats around a little I saw it bolt out.  Sneaky little devil!   I caught it in a plastic cup and took it outside to kill it because it's said that the smell they give off after they die attracts more of their kind, and I certainly didn't want that.  Then I walked to the FamilyMart (24 convenience store) to throw out the cup because Japan pretty much only has public trash cans at convenience stores and throwing the cup out in my house would defeat the purpose of taking it outside to kill it in the first place.

When I got back to my house I didn't see any other mukade but let me tell you I certainly checked because it's also said that they always travel in pairs.  It wasn't too easy getting back to sleep that nigh on my futon spread over the tatami floor.  I was lucky though because it didn't bite me.  I've heard anything from their poison being strong enough to have "killed small children and put grown men in the hospital" to it basically just really hurting a lot.  I think I'd lean more towards the latter, but maybe it depends on the size.  If you go to google and search the images for "mukade" you should be able to find some pretty gnarly pictures.  Keep in mind though that the average mukade is probably nowhere near as large as the ones you are likely to find on google.  Ewwww haha.

Other than that there're lots of dragonflies, random cats (regular and Japanese short-tail) and tons of little crabs down by the water, especially at night.  The cicadas here are crazy loud!  It's one of the iconic sounds of summer here in Japan.  There are spiders too of course, but nothing too crazy.  I wish they would work a little harder at eating more of these damn mosquitos though...  if anyone wants to send me some itch cream that'd be great (not really though, cause they have that here too.  geeze they're not savages!).

I hope you've enjoyed this slightly shorter email.  Until the next one,

-greg.