Duck's Nuts on Play: Call of the Wild

I've never quite considered myself a city gal, at least while I was in Singapore. Yes, I lived in an urban environment, but I did climb a couple of trees, hiked in Malaysia sometimes with my dad, and read every book written by British veternarian, James Herriot, so I figured that counted for something. But holidaying in countries like Great Britain, Australia and India certainly jolted me out of that false impression.



It looks like the kangaroo is lifting the car!

It's most stark when it comes to animals. In Singapore, getting to see an animal means going to the zoo or visiting your school's garden. My school's garden, so I was informed (though maybe the school's officials were just blowing their own horn - I never got to find out!), was pretty good compared to other schools - it had chickens, terrapins, rabbits and more. I visited the garden daily and especially loved to squeeze the seed pods of the balsam plant and hop on the stones across the pond while the terrapins lounged about in the sun.



I loved squeezing the balsam pods. Photo by Vertigogen on Flickr via Creative Commons

These little creatures, though, are I guess what one would describe as domesticated animals. They were certainly not wild.

A few years later, I was excited beyond belief when I visited England and Scotland. Sheep! Actual live sheep! I'm not dreaming! OMG!!!! I still distinctly remember the gently rolling green slopes dotted with little clouds of white and the three sheep who blocked the small country road we were driving on and didn't allow us to pass.

My best sheep encounter though, was near the bottom of the Himalayas in Kashmir. There, the sheep were herded around by child shepherds and were more than happy to pose for me.



This sheep on the Himalayas in Kashmir looked like it was crossed with a cow.



Again in Kashmir. Very cute!

But the sheep, though, were not wild animals either. They were farm animals, and, as you can tell from the photos, quite comfortable with my presence near them.

So it was only in the past two or three years that I finally saw wild animals (I'm not counting visiting the zoo!) such as camels wandering the desert in the Middle East and kangaroos hopping across large paddocks in outback Australia. There was something magical about watching the graceful creatures move with ease in their favourite environment.



Who goes there? A forester kangaroo at the Bay of Fires in Tasmania.



Are you sure that's not a stuff toy? A wombat at the Bay of Fires.

In those moments of watching the kangaroos, wombats or even multi-coloured wild birds (that I didn't know the first thing about) eat, sleep and graze, my breathing would become more relaxed and my shoulders less tense, while my eyes would soften. It was like I was home - finally reunited with nature and its creatures with whom I had shared the planet all my life, but rarely in the same place at the same time.

Next stop - Africa!