a wild boar not bothered about humans

visiting rustic pulau ubin on a weekday is a feel-good experience. you don't have to put up with the crowds at the jetty, while waiting for the 10-minute bumboat ride at $2.50 a trip; at the bicycle rental shop, you have time to choose a bike that suits your needs; at the visitor centre, the npark people can attend to your queries in a chit-chat manner; and at chek jawa, you can explore the place at leisure. you do not have to worry whether the tower will be able to take the weight of so many height seekers.

the bonus is that you may get to see things that will have normally been scared away by the throngs of visitors and the noise that they create on a weekend. today, we saw two wild boars, three oriental pied hornbills and an owl.




this is also the first time i managed to get close enough to take a picture of this shy creature. i would not say that this wild boar that we came across near chek jawa was friendly but it was definitely not bothered by the humans around it. earlier on , we had seen another one dashing across the track, just ahead of us. the first time i had seen wild boars was in desaru, after a golf game. on our own mainland, i have seen them at lim chu kang.

can you spot the hornbill?

the hornbills were on some trees near the resort - which used to be known as marina resort but it now has a different name - and subsequently, they flew to the roof of one of the buildings. the owl caught us by surprise, so i did not manage to capture it on digital image. one of the hornhills appeared to be performing some dance/ritual on the roof-top.

i had wanted to explore the western part of the island after reading about the ketam mountain bike park in this blog. however, my friend, who have been to ubin several times but had not done the mangrove boardwalk at chek jawa was quite insistent on visiting that part of the island. i would have missed photographing the wild boar if we had stuck to my original plan. anyway, there is always time for another visit to the island.

at the mangrove reserve, there are quite a number of nipah palms. it is always the 'attap chee' that i would see but this time around, i saw some flowers on the palms. as it was high tide during our visit, we did not get to see all those creatures that are shown on colourful brochures of chek jawa. however, we did see two white bellied eagles, with one of them successfully snatching a fish while skimming over the surface of the water in the sea.

from the visitor centre, i walked to the jetty where i saw this formation of rocks - which together form what is called pulau sekudu. it reminded me of my younger days when, on some weekends, we would paddle the sampans from pasir ris to pulau ubin. on the way, we would make a rest-stop at this rock island to look for shells. i remember we referred to it as 'frog island'.

i do not know if it is my imagination. somehow, the disused quarries, of which there are five, at pulau ubin, especially the surface of the water, appear so much placid, cleaner and nicer than those on the mainland.

wild boars at lim chu kang

picture from wikipidea

when i mentioned my sightings - i have seen wild boars on three occasions - to mr lee, a farmer in lim chu kang, he shared with me enthusiastically his experiences with wild boars on his farm and its vicinity.

first saw wild boars here (in lck)

he confessed that he used to trap wild boars with metal cages that he constructed himself. he would have the assistance of his two thai workers and his dogs. the heavy penalties, especially the jail term, has deterred him from carrying on this activity. according to him, you are not even allowed to keep the little wild boar if it happens to stray into your compound. a neighbour of his was fined for keeping a young wild boar which had fallen into one of his ponds.

they used to be so plentiful that he could get four piglet wild boars in one cage. however, he cautioned that it could be a dangerous or even fatal experience if you encounter an enraged sow wild boar. one of his dogs was charged at and gored by a sow wild boar. the dog died.

although some of the wild boars breed locally, quite a number of them come from across the causeway. wild boars are good swimmers and they do not need any flotation device to make the more than one kilometre crossing across the straits of johor. (wonder if mas selamat ran into any sounder of wild boars while swimming to stulang.) mr lee said he had seen as many as twenty-four wild boars making a beach landing at one time.

wild boars usually make their appearance at dusk, especially after a period of heavy rain. out of the three times that i have seen wild boars at lim chu kang, twice they appeared after the rain had stopped.

young wild boar meat is tastier than the meat of domesticated pigs. according to mr lee's wife, you must slaughter them the correct way if you do not want to end up eating meat with an overpowering smell. the female wild boars do not pose any problem; it is the male that you have to exercise care. you have to castrate the two testicles before doing anything else, then the smell will not get to the meat.

the fully-grown wild boars do not give tasty meat. the best meat comes from those that are about 10kg in weight and aged about 5 or 6 months. one of my friends who used to be a regular soldier told me that the commandoes, in their jungle survival training, learn how to slaughter and cook wild boars. wonder if they also know how to get rid of the smell.

according to mr lee, the number of wild boars has decreased over the years because of culling by the authorities. over at ivy singh's bollywood, wild boars have reportedly been spotted in the vicinity.

i have eaten wild boar meat but not in singapore. i had it in my curry noodles in a coffee-shop in kulai, johor. one of my friends used to get to eat wild boar meat when he was serving as an instructor in a leadership camp on tekong island in the early 70s. another friend told us that the meat was sold by his neighbour in his kampong in sembawang.