13 Jun 2009

back in malacca

I've not been back home for weeks now. My tortoise seems to have disappeared - is it because of the dry spell we're having these days? The plants seem to be doing ok though two of my roses have died. The weather has been rather hot - in the high 30s lately and there's been no rain either. But something good has occurred - the tilapia gave birth! And I actually saw it. I noticed the tilapia staying still for a long time in the pond and wondered what happened. When I commented it to Yatie my maid, she said perhaps it was giving birth. I looked again and true enough, not long after I saw a cloud of tiny, silvery fry coming out. Birth is such a miracle - whether it is man or animal or as in this instance - fish! And the mother fish was so protective. Any errant fish who dared come near her fry was quickly chased away. And they were literally hundreds, if not almost a thousand fry. I wanted to protect them too, so put up a net across the pond to prevent the other big fish from eating up the fry. However nature has its way I guess - the fry just swam off through the holes in the net and could not be protected. By evening of the same day I noticed a much smaller cloud of silver and the mother fish was still trying to protect her wee ones.
So what Yatie and I did was to catch the ones still left and put them in the aquarium used to keep my guppies and other small fish. Hopefully they'll survive. Can't wait to go back now to see 'my little one ' grow. Ha ha..

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