On a walk

                                                                        Elsa

My Elsa and I were out for a walk on a lovely tropical evening.  The sky was the colour of ripe peaches--all reds, oranges & gold and as we walked the light was fading.  Past some bushes, I suddenly heard a loud, quick rustling.  I hastily moved to the middle of the path--after all there are snakes around and dusk is their time to hunt!  But Elsa seemed quite unperturbed.   Then I saw a shape running up a nearby coconut palm--a glossy, black furry shape.  In the fading light, I couldn't quite see the head.  I thought it might be an Asian palm civet.  But on reading up on it, they are rarely pure black, usually having some kind of marking.  Anyhow, I'll go with the idea that it was a palm civet, since I haven't hear of forest squirrels coming around here yet, and the tail seemed too broad to be a cat's tail.  I stood and watched as it ran to the top of the coconut palm and then jumped on to the nearby tree and disappeared.

      Here is a picture of a palm civet taken a long while back