Animal life in Thailand is part of the environment, seems to be tolerated rather than revered. Dogs, cats, birds, lizards, insects, all survive in close proximity to the humans; unless they've been discovered to be delicious, no one disturbs the animals, and the animals mostly don't disturb the humans. This is in Bangkok, of course; in other provinces where elephants and tigers still roam, there may be more distance and awe.
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Dogs are ever-present, seem to belong to everyone and to no one. They roam around the school (especially the cafeteria area), in all the streets, through the open seating of outdoor restaurants. The caf ladies have a slop-bucket for all uneaten food; students are pretty concientious about it, and I'm sure the dogs appreciate it. Temple dogs are reputed to be the hungriest in Thailand (sort of like the proverbial churchmice of our European heritage). The dogs are nonchalant, not fawning but never aggressive. You'll hear an occasional brief dog-spat at night, may be about dog-romance. The dogs are mostly not neutered, though apparently the Thai government has offered free dog-neutering to any who are brought in to a clinic; no one takes ownership of any given dog, so it just doesn't happen.
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Cats seem to be pretty scarce. There is a famous "diamond-eyed" breed specific to Thailand and a favorite of a previous king. The cats I've seen have been even scrawnier than the dogs, and more skittish around humans; I don't think I've seen a diamond-eye.
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Birds come in huge flocks--these are in the canal in Samut Sakhon, resting on mats of floating lotus. They're beautiful in flight...
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The interesting creature with the fish tail and legs is an amazing amphibian--we had a very entertaining half hour watching the interaction between these guys and the pretty little crabs in the muck at canal-side, also in Samut Sakhon. First you see a school of fish, each one swimming quite quickly, the school as a whole mostly swirling in place; they seem to be having a fine time and are clearly quite at home in the water. Each fish is between 4 and 7 inches long; the school covers maybe a ten-foot by six-foot area in the water, consists of maybe 30 fish. Then one decides to come ashore, butts its nose against the sandbar, pulls itself up and out of the water using finny legs (leggy fins?) The fin-legs function quite well on the sand, where our critter makes pretty good time once he decides on a direction and destination. Immediately out of the water, he flicks his back-fin up like a Japanese fan, as though to dry it out. Then scopes out the crab situation--the mucky sand is dotted with inch-diameter crab holes, with pretty little red crabs and blue crabs scuttling along the sand and into the holes. Each crab is about an inch to 2 inches wide, feet and claws included. We watched a legged-fish capture and devour a crab in about ten minutes, seemed pretty efficient.
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We noticed a wild bee-hive in a tree; I don't yet have enough Thai to find out whether people keep hived bees here.
And here's me, as in Feed the Birds from Mary Poppins. The pigeons are fat and plentiful.
I've seen one snake, about 2 feet long, yellow, stopped pedestrian student traffic on the way home from school until one brave boy shooed the snake off into the brush.
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I don't have a good picture of the 6-inch-long centipedes. I've only seen singletons. They roll up into pretty, shiny mahogany curls, look kind of like a snail, about an inch and a half in diameter. Then (when their coast is clear?) they poke one end out (must be the front...) and crawl along on quick little legs. I'd believe there might actually be a hundred legs on one of them.
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Tiny lizards flit along walls and ceilings; people generally like those, greet them affectionately.
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Mosquitos are a menace; one of the teachers gave me what I thought was a tennis racquet, turns out to be an electric mosquito-zapper. It hasn't helped much; I was never very good at tennis, either.
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It's interesting to see the zoo that is simply everywhere here.
You are living among a wild zoo. What fun to find new animals and see familiar animals in a new way? "Water in - water out" I am intrigued by a water-bottle-refill-station. How would it be if we had such stations in the malls or beside drinking fountains anywhere? Curious.
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