chicken run

Chicken start running over my fly sheet before 5, so I'm wide awake. It must be a great game if you’re a Malagasy chicken; taking a run up, squawking and skidding up the fly sheet before sliding down about 3 inches above my face. Despite my 20 years or so of being vegetarian I spend my first few waking minutes pondering the various ways to kill and eat a hen. Building a voracious appetite over the next couple of hours I eagerly pile my shiny bowl with purple breakfast rice with condensed milk and a fried dough thing known as mufu (that’ll be my unofficial spelling) It tastes like a slightly fishy donut and works well dipped in honey or the ubiquitous condensed milk. Unfortunately several people miss out on breakfast and are making regular extra visits to the long drop toilet. I have words with my digestive system to stay strong and hope for the best. We head into forest fragment S9 to observe woolly lemur behaviour whilst another group go off in search of herps (reptiles and amphibians) I am, as usual, drawn to the (slightly) smaller world of insects and lizards but force myself to look up for fury primates and after getting very excited over a small boa we find a group of woolly lemurs high in a tree. The curious stares penetrate the forest in both directions but these are the only ones we spot all morning. Spiders on the other hand are plentiful, large and varied…