One-Off Challenge 9: Hold A Creepy-Crawly Type Beastie

This challenge is courtesy of...

Andy "Challenge Master" Law.

The challenge

Hold a creepy-crawly type beastie. There's no specifics as to what counts as a creepy-crawly, so it's dealer's choice. I'm going more exotic than a common or garden house spider, but beyond that, I'm easy on what counts.

First, catch your creepy-crawly...

Now, technically, I'm sure I know some people who own exotic pets of the sort that would qualify for this challenge, but the point of these activities is to get me doing stuff I wouldn't otherwise do. So it's a trip to the Five Sisters Zoo in West Lothian for us, along with Jen and her two kids, Alan and Sam.

From left to right: Jen, Alan, Sephie, Xavi, Nae and Fury The Wonder Horse. (Sam was asleep in the buggy.)

Armed with our crowd of blonde moppets, we descended upon the various animal residents of the Five Sisters like an easily distractable noise-tornado. There was shouting. There was screaming. There was flapping around in a terrified panic.  And all that was just when Jen got stung by a wasp.

(To be fair, Jen's reaction was actually just "Ouch, that hurt, I just got stung by a wasp." She didn't even swear!  Sometimes I wonder if she's actually a replicant...)

Anyway, the Five Sisters has animal handling sessions, suitable for ages 3+. Jen and I took Alan and Xavi to fondle beasts, while Nae took one for the team and looked after the two under-twos on her own.

I love my wife.

Our first beastie was a corn snake, which Xavi looooooooved. He was super taken with the snake, to the extent that his choice of toys in the gift shop at the end was "a nake, and another nake!" It was ok. More muscle than I expected, a bit like a living rope of sinew. I muttered across to Jen that I was totally counting the snake as a creepy-crawly if the other animals were just cute fluffy things.

A 'nake!

Next up... a Madagascan hissing cockroach! Excellent! A bona-fide creepy-crawly. Xavi was less taken with this one, but still quite liked it. It was very tickly to hold, as its legs were covered in little hairs to help it grip.

It was really, really tickly!

Lastly, we held the not-a-hedgehog tanric. It's from Madagascar too, and looks exceptionally like a hedgehog while being not related in the slightest. It's an amazing example of convergent evolution and not in any way a creep-crawly.  But it's cute, so here's a picture of it anyway.

Dawwwww... Also, how is this not a hedgehog? Life is weird.
Challenge complete!





Will I be doing it again?

Maybe. We might well go to Butterfly World or somewhere similar with the little ones again.  They loved the zoo and Xavi really liked holding the animals.  Still, it's probably Renae's turn to have a nice time stroking not-hogs while I deal with rampaging toddlers.

Long-term updates

French words "learned" (according to the memrise app):558.
 
Daily photos taken? Yes.
 
Swordfighting learnt: None this week.
 
I am currently reading: I've just finished the Earthsea Quartet, by Ursula Le Guin. It was an odd beast - very obviously an "old-school" fantasy novel with a slow, deliberate, almost oral history cadence to the language. My biggest problem was with the female characters. There's barely any with actual names in the first or third novel and, despite the main character of the second and fourth novels being female, she has almost no agency at all. Things just happen to her, usually at the instigation of men. To the modern fantasy reader, where female characters are much more common and more active, it is really noticeable. It was an enjoyable read, however.

"Cheat" days on food since last week: None.
"Cheat" days on exercise: Loads, but I'm off to IKEA this afternoon, so that'll burn a few calories!
Favourite drawing: Only one, but a big, fairly involved one this week.
Note I didn't say it was "good"...

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