Bloomin' Forests and Tick Talk

Tom and I went terrestrial today. With Genevie, Ismail and Siew Chin to check out the mass blooming at Bukit Timah. And wow! What blossoms carpeted the forest floor!

Tom spotted the tantalizing red fruits of Streculia coccinea that just HAD to be photographed.

OF COURSE the plant had to be embedded in the middle of a nice thick layer of leaf litter that I would have to wade through. Leaf litter that no doubt harboured colonies of blood-thirsty ticks. Ticks that would happily creep through my so-called tick-proof footwear and all-purpose anti-bug pants. Ticks that would burrow into my legs and lay generations of tick babies before I get my limbs amputated.

Ticks were the talk of the afternoon. Holed up at the Visitor Centre's seminar room due to the downpour, Siew Chin and Genevie regaled us with Real Life Tick Encounters.

Tom is already thinking of hair-raising ways for wildfilms to shoot the forest.

I could only think of ticks ...