What is It? Video Addition

Click on the video below and see if you can answer the question:

What is it?



So, is it...

1. a baby snake
2. a leech from some lettuce we just bought
3. a gecko tail
   
4. a centimeter worm (we use the metric system here)

I will leave some a bunch of blank space here so you can't cheat and see the answer quite yet. Make a guess and then scroll down to find out what the little wiggly thing is.



















So, what is it? Well, it is actually a gecko tail. Geckos are ravenous little skeeter eaters (they eat lots of other insects too). But just because they spend their lives eating dusty-winged moths and other mouthwatering treats, doesn't mean they don't find themselves on the other end of the fork occasionally. That is to say, geckos eat some things and some things eat geckos. Birds, other lizards and geckos, or in this case, our dog.

Our dog saw a four-legged long-tailed toy running down the sidewalk and tried to play with it. The gecko didn't care for the game, but it was a bit too slow. Our dog snipped her pointy puppy teeth right onto the gecko's tail. Ouch!

No problem. The gecko had a secret weapon...the tail is a break-away. It snaps right off like a piece of Legos. Our dog ended up with a tiny tail and the gecko ended up with a scary story to tell all the other geckos around the campfire that night.

Lots of lizards have this nifty feature. Some don't even need a dog to help snap the tail off. They can just flex their little lizard muscles and pop their own tail right off. But the tail has little muscles of its own too. And those little muscles keep twitching and flipping around so that the tail looks like a tasty treat too. While the hungry gecko-eater is getting ready to munch of the delicious market-fresh all-organic tail, the rest of the gecko is getting away and living to flee another day. This particular tail kept on dancing around for over 15 minutes after the gecko left it behind.

Giant Leaf-Tailed Gecko from Madagascar

It doesn't hurt the gecko and special cells even keep it from bleeding. Geckos do store fat in their tails, so it does lose some of its well-deserved energy. And until a new tail grows back (yep, they just grow a new one), they can't use the cool tail trick to get away from predators.

And how cool is this? Sometimes a bit of tail is left behind, so that little bit grows back into a full-sized tail too. Add that to the new tail it normally grows and you end up with a two-tailed gecko.

What Mr. Lebo did During Your Summer Vacation...in 500 Words or Less

The tremendous and towering baobab trees of Madagascar.

Welcome back! Tonga soa!

I hope you had a marvelous summer in Princeton and elsewhere. I myself just had a wonderful winter here in Madagascar. Don't forget, I'm on the upside down part of the world, the southern hemisphere. While you had a hot and sometimes rainy summer, I had a cool and very dry winter. There was even a tiny bit of snow one day on our lovely tropical island, but I didn't get a chance to see it (it's quite a big island too).

Now that you all have started hitting the books again, the blog will be up and running too. I will put up a new post each weekend, so you will have all week to check it out and leave some lovely comments. Don't forget to vote on the What is It? poll on the sidebar too.

Enough words. Let's see some pretty pictures of what I've been up to.

My wife's sister and father came over for a fantastic visit this summer and we went to some great places together. This is from a hike and climb through the crazy rock formations of the tsingy limestone.

My wife and I are dressed up and dancing, but we are not at a wedding. We are at a Malagasy funeral and we're doing the conga around 5 dead bodies that were just dug up from an underground tomb. Don't worry, you'll learn more about this later.

I got to go on a trip and picnic to the zoo with the fabulous kids from the children's home, Akany Avoko. I volunteer there 4-5 days a week as a carpenter, furniture maker and science teacher.

Of course, I got to see some more cool animals like this beefy chameleon here.

And this big-eyed nocturnal lemur.

And this big-eyed-nocturnal-lemur-eater also known as a fosa.

I also volunteer as a medic and English teacher with the Malagasy Red Cross. On this day, I was lucky enough to be a stretcher carrier at an international soccer game, Madagascar vs. Brazil. The fighting bulls of Madagascar actually won 3-1. And I had a better-than-front-row seat right on the sideline.

Some great friends and family members donated money for me to fix up the wood shop at the children's home and now I teach woodworking to the kids once a week too. Valentine made this crafty wooden plane.

Every time we travelled, we and our white skin seemed to always attract all the kids' attention.

We found this adorable stray puppy and adopted her into our home and hearts. Sadly, she became sick and passed away just a few weeks ago. Her name was Kibo and we miss her very, very much.

I ate lots of delicious Malagasy food like this plate of green papaya salad that cost a whopping 7 cents.

Cindy and her sister enjoyed playing with kids when we travelled.

I saw some beautiful natural sights like this glorious sunset.

And there aren't any ice cream stands or hot dog vendors like the Jersey shore, but we did get to the beach too. Quite pretty at least.

If you want to see and hear more, just keep coming back. I will be putting up whole posts about several of the great trips I had this summer. And of course all the adventures yet to come as well.

I miss you all very much.

(For the picky ones among you, I actually used 591 words not the 500 words or less I promised. Sorry.)