Lions in Japan: Things with Feathers & Things with Antennae

Do you like fluffy puppies? What about birds, gliding through the air? And bugs, with their creepy six little legs and their pinpoint dots of eyes?
As you have read before, I love the forests and the mountains here. (Will I ever be happy in a big city after living here?)

Since I also enjoyed the animals around here, I'm going to introduce those today. Three stand out. The title hints at it already: one is a bird, the other an insect and the last one is a spider.

Praying Mantis

First, Japan's praying mantis. What's special about it? Eh... Nothing. We just don't have them in Belgium.
Here you can pick them up from the streets at will. Well, not anymore since the winter weather has arrived now...

They always look grumpy to me. When you try to pick them up, they'll not move an inch, but they will clasp the ground or wall as tightly as possible with their tiny claws.

And when you then do pick them up (a tiny claw is no match for a human biceps, not even when you got six of them), they'll start flexing like "Hey, look at me, what ya got, huh, huh?! What ya looking at, huh?!"

Imma big green mothafucka hell yeeeeah

I just think they're pretty awesome, okay? Just look at this mean big boy:

Black Kite
The next animal in the spotlight: the black kite. This bird is everywhere, from the beach to the mountains. When I leave for school, I can greet them on the telephone lines.

Black kite aka Milvus migrans lineatus

One Sunday morning, I saw the most amazing scene - pure National Geographic material. Three of these were sitting on the telephone line, when one of them dove down and snatched a chick.
Jealous of the delicious snack, the other two started chasing him, making him drop the chick. And then in turn, he'd chase them trying to recover his snack.
As soon as the murder of crows nearby saw that, they started to play chase too.
And there you suddenly got three birds of prey and five crows chasing and bugging and pestering each other, with one dead little bird changing claws every ten seconds.

Jorō Spider

They come in one size ("big") and various colours, but I love the ones that carry the colours of the Belgian flag. It was like a little, special welcome: picking the single animal I've got a phobia for and putting my countries on it. I appreciate the gesture, Mother Nature.

Not to mention that I bumped my head into one and panicked and when I rubbed it off, its legs got stuck in my tangly hair and it fell down but lost it legs so I walked around with spider legs in my hair and the effect of a mini heart attack. Yeah, never mind that.

But eh, yeah, they just sit there doing spider stuff. Like this: