Where're All The Frogs And Beetles?

I remembered when I was waaayy younger, back in the early 80s, I used to see a lot of insects or amphibians coming into my late maternal granny's house in Penang and paternal grandparents place in Teluk Intan. Insects like dragonflies, green shiny beetles the size of a 20 cent coins, horn beetles, butterflies, moths or even toads and frogs would on more than one occasion came visiting the houses, uninvited of course. Heck, there will even be a local tortoise or turtles came a knockin once in a while. The best time would be in Ipoh, where I would go on bicycle trips with neighbours to "hunt" for grasshoppers, tadpoles and guppies "longkang". In Teluk Intan, where the grandparents house is perched just right beside Bidor River, cousins and myself would catch mangroove crabs, "udang galahs" the size of a 12 inch ruler, with the occasional misfortune of snaring a terrapin instead of river carps (or worse still, irresponsible act of dirtying the river - used condoms). During the rising tide, where the water comes into nearly a quarter of the backyard, I could observed archer fishes, puffers, as well as even river snakes and monitors. I guessed I just missed all these stuffs...I reckoned Chloe and Dylan's stories would be very much different from mine...but hey, there would always be one of those exotic pets or aquariums where they could observe "nature" from a a safer distance.