My Marbled Frogmouth

This a Tawny Frogmouth chick.  They are not owls, like many think. They are more closely related to kookaburras or nightjars.  They are nocturnal.  They catch food with their beaks rather than their talons.  Bothe males and females take turns sitting on the eggs.  The couple stays together until one dies.

It is supposed to eat mice, rats, cicadas, beetles and moths.  Ours is a baby, so we smash up beetles in water and use a dropper to put the guts into it's mouth. It seems pretty happy about that.  It is tame and seems to like us.  It stinks like a skunk when it feels threatened.  There are 14 species of frogmouths

My Three Snakes

I currently have three green tree pythons.  I have recently convinced them to eat dead rats instead of live ones.  Their names are Emerald, Viper, and St. Patrick

Barking Owl

Me holding up the rat while he eats

Me with a rat to feed him

This is my new baby owl.  I think that it may be a barking owl.  It eats rats but I have to hold them up like it's mom would.  We named it Indy, since we got it on Independence Day.


 

My Rainbow Bee Eater

This is my rainbow bee eater.  It's wing is injured from someone shooting him with a sling shot.  He is very friendly and eats ants and bees,

I got a bandicoot yesterday, but it ran away.

Marsupial Madness

I am hand rearing a baby cuscus.  People ate her mom.  She still drinks milk and eats fruit too.  She loves to be with me al day in her bilum.

My Papuan Eagle

My newest bird is going to get HUGE! It can eat dogs and pigs. I hope he doesn't eat my little brothers  Right now it is a fledgling. Later it will have a wingspan of 5 feet and be almost 3 feet tall.  There are only a few thousand left in the world.  This one was brought to us by some neighbors who ate it's sister.  It likes to make noises back and forth with me. 

Yummy Stuff

Last week I ate Muna Beetles that I caught and fried on the fire.  This week we ate an amethystine python that we killed with a machete and cooked on the fire.

Me eating a python tonight.  IT tasted like a mix between chicken and fish.  We wrapped it around a stick and cooked it on the fire.

I ate this muna beetle
 

From Catapillars into Butterflies

We fed a bunch of monarch caterpillars until they became butterflies

His name is GI Joe

Eaten by a Baby

This is my 7 foot long Amethystine Python.  It is a baby that may grow to 28 feet long.   It is the 4th longest snake in the world.  I feed it rats.

Fake Hamsters

The other day I was putting Rat Trap away when he decided to fly up into a tree.  He was about 40 feet up in a mango tree.  We tried to climb up and get him but that didn't work because he kept climbing higher into the tree.  We set out some toy hamsters to see if he would swoop down at them.  But he didn't.  Then we flipped over our guinea pig cages.

Eventually my dad's friend climbed up and got our owl down.  We put him away and closed the door.

A Rat's Nightmare

This is my two month old barn owl.  It eats whole rats every day and it is nocturnal.  Barn owls live all over the world except for in desert and polar regions.  It has extremely sharp claws for tearing flesh. We got him about twenty minutes ago.  His name is Rat Trap.

Falconry

This is our newest pet.  I think it is a grey goshawk.  His name is Ninja.  I am studying falconry and will train him.

Poop and Fangs

we didn't have a camera with us so we borrowed some pictures

 

this is where I got bit

 

I got bit by a Green Tree Python the other day. It bit me on the hand while I was trying to pick it up.  They are very annoying because they are almost always pooping.  These snakes live in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Australia.  They are not poisonous, they are constrictors.   

 

 

Killed by Feathers

On my 7th birthday, I was living in a tribe in the jungle.  That was the day that a friend of mine brought a baby cassowary over to my house to play.  I got to pet it, it felt more furry that feathery.  We would go out to the jungle to find bugs for it to eat.  After feeding it, it would follow us everywhere.  We ran around the helicopter pad and it would chase us and play.  It came back many times after that.

Cassowaries eat fruit and bugs. They live in Papua New Guinea and Australia.  They can grow to be almost 6 feet tall.  This one was being hand fed by the tribal people so that they could shoot it with a bow and arrow and eat it one day.

They are an endangered species. 

This cassowary was safe to play with because it was hand fed and young.  If they are older they can be dangerous.  There used to be one that would live near a trail we went down often.
In World War 2, the American and Australian troops that were stationed here in PNG were warned to stay away from them. 

Monster Caterpillar

 

When I was six I found a really big caterpillar.  Sometimes spiky hairy caterpillars will give you a rash.  There are caterpillars that have venom in their spikes, so watch out for those.  

Spiders

This is a Golden Silk Orb Weaver.  I like to catch them.  I also like to eat them, roasted over a fire. It's venom is a powerful neurotoxin similar to the black widow, but it is not lethal.  This is a female.  The Latin name for this spider is edulus which means edible.

Spider Catching Tips:

•  No need to approach it slowly, just don't bump it's web while coming in for a catch.
•  
• Use a stick to break the straight line support strands of it's web. 
•  
• When it falls, use your fingers to grab it by the neck, just behind the head.  (This is harder if they smaller in size than an American quarter)
•  
•  If you grab them this way, they are unable to turn their head and bite you.
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• If you want to eat it anyway, just squish it's head.  That is what the old ladies in the our tribe taught me.  If you eat a spider and die, it is not my fault.  Don't sue me.

•  

I see and catch these orb weavers

These are huge.  They lived in my house in the jungle and one bit my mom

This is a jewel spider, this kind bit my brother

This is a close up of the Golden Silk Orb Weaver

I like to catch these

Lunch

Hornet Fighters

This is the wreckage only moments before the attack

A month after I turned five, I got stung over forty times by hornets.  We had hiked into the jungle to see a World War Two bomber plane that had been shot down.  When we got to it, my brother climbed on top of it get his picture taken.  He stepped on a nest that the hornets had built in the plane.

The hornets came flying out.  There were about 600 of them.  They were mad.  We ran away as fast as we could, but there were thorns and the jungle was swampy.  My dad dropped his backpack and camera, grabbed me and my brother and we ran.  He put us down two minutes later and wacked the hornets away. 

I ended up having to drink a lot of water to flush flush out the venom, but I was fine. 

Dance Party with My Cockatoo

If I start being crazy and dancing, my baby cockatoo starts screaming and dancing too

 

Bosavi Silky Cuscus in the Grocery Store

Today I went to the grocery store and a man inside the store sold us a female baby cuscus.  It can go at about the same speed as a sloth.  This is a Bosavi Silky Cuscus, a species that was only discovered in 2oo9.  It is an arboreal, (lives in trees) nocturnal, (active at night) marsupial (has a pouch for babies) that is an omnivore (eats meat and plants).  It usually eats eggs, small creatures, fruit and nuts and leaves.  She is very cuddly and friendly.

Her name is Midnight

Guinea Pig Pups

 

My Guinea Pig had two babies last night.

 

When the mothers are pregnant, you are not able to hold them, because you may kill the babies.  When they are born, sometimes they will eat lettuce and vegetables, but they feed mostly off of their mother's milk.  They usually have 1-6 in a litter.  The biggest litter ever recorded was 17 guinea pig pups.

Moths

I found this moth today

When you catch or hold a moth or butterfly:

1. Don't touch the wings because it takes off the powdery scales that are all over it's wings.  It could make it unable to fly.

2. If it is injured you can just hold it in the palm of your hand without closing it. 

3. If it is healthy then just catch and cup your hand over it so that it is enclosed inside but not squished.

How do you tell if it is a moth or butterfly???

Butterflies put their wings up folded together when they land.

A moth rests with its wings open

Rhino Beetles: How to catch them

 

This is me and my dad when I was 2. I started catching large bugs at a very young age

 

 

Look closely at the top of my head in the first picture.  You will see a rhinoceros beetle.

 

I live in Papua New Guinea and these can be found often.  I have found more in towns than in the jungle

 

If you ever want to catch one here is what to do.

 

1. Pick it up by grabbing the horn.  That will only work if it is a male. 

2.  If you want to catch a female then grab it on the back.

3.  Look out for the legs.  It doesn't hurt that badly but the legs can grab onto you. Once they are on they grasp pretty hard and their legs have 2-3 spikes each.  I normally see 8 spikes on the whole beetle.  These spikes will dig into you and they can draw blood

4. If One of these is stuck on you, yank hard and don't worry about the blood.

 

Once when I was about 3 I stuck one of these to the back of my brother's head.  He screamed a lot and I got in trouble.  My mom had a very hard time getting it off of him. 

 

I have caught over 1,000 of these in my lifetime.  They make pretty good pets.