Mundul buung - bird attracting
Mundul buung in Kadayan …birds attracting in English not exactly, the word mundul in Kadayan itself is harmless but it becomes harmful once mundul works. Attracting in this context is just giving a special attention it doesn’t involve catching; as such, an act is all right. While if we say bird watching that’s almost very harmless, whether the birds are watching at the person is another story.
You see what I mean the difficulty in translating some of the words or terms used in language or dialect.
Mundul becomes harmful once mundul works because the idea behind is to catch the bird. The way to do it is first by enticing the birds to come nearer to the bird1, which is kept inside the cage as bait. The stick2 or sticks were wrapped with a glue-like substance, placed them just next or beside the cage making it no choice for the enticed birds but to land on the stick. The moment the birds touched the stick, which is about a foot, or two feet long the bird is trapped not only the feet but also the wings and body thus paralyses them from flying-that bad isn’t it?
To begin with, the Kadayan’s story about mundul in the olden days was always associated with Kadayan’s males who were good at attracting females. The charm of the males had made it impossible for females to resist, especially so if the male was madly fallen in love with a female. But first let proceed with this:
Mundul is the magical word for attracting or enticing bird, which eventually lead to catching it. The bird is called taipas in Kadayan- serindit in Malay or lovebird or small parakeet in English
Taipas is a colourful and beautiful small bird, fascinating to look at, it always shows a great affection for its mate.
In Sabah, taipas don’t appear all the year around; we could only see them during the fruit season. Where they are hiding in the rest of the year one may have to ask bird’s experts.
Taipas stop only at selected tall fruit trees like Kambayau, langsat, pangalaban or durian.
Two reasons why Kadayan involved in enticing the birds, first, its Kadayan’s sporting activity and they keep the birds as their pets, which could live for many years. Second, for sales in the open market known as tamu-typical Sunday gathering in major towns in Borneo.
In the olden days the taipas were exchanged with goods with town people. Now they sell them for cash. Non-Kadayan were also involved in catching taipas- I used word catching not attracting because this group of people does it solely for money, some even involved with scrupulous third party businessmen smuggle them out of country. However, I have not heard Kadayan involved in trade like this, because Kadayan has spiritual value and sentimental attachment to taipas.
The mundul season takes place during fruit season at the time when the weather is not too hot or not too wet.
The luring begins in the early morning around half past four and is done by around half past seven.
The taipas experts studied the group behaviour of the birds for a few days before the actual mundul takes place, like, what time they arrive, in which part of the trees they likely to land, the estimate height to place the bait, estimate height to climb. It can be hundreds meters high from the ground depending on how tall the trees are.
Mundul requires first, gatah -getah in Malay-rubber like glue obtained from another fruit tree, people in Borneo called it tarap tree, when I talked to a friend from Peninsular they have no idea about tarap tree is. The tree produces sweat fruits akin to durian but with soft thorns instead of hard and spiky, durian seeds are much bigger, whilst tarap seeds are just as big as coffee beans. To get the rubber -latex out one has to cut the skin of the tree deep enough until the fluid comes out, the liquid is blended with water and become sticky stuff, mind you this is worst than chewing gum. Second, one needs a cage or cages to keep taipas, see as picture above. The third, one also needs a chatty long tamed taipas put it in the cage. The cage would be hung on the tree and the rubber glue is prepared in a joy stick fashion which can be as long as one foot to two feet in length. The taipas would land on these joysticks, which are placed just next to the cage where the chatty taipas inside playing a role as bait. The mundul experts could attract as many as five to six taipas in one occasion.
I know now that Government Department of Wild Life in most countries wouldn’t be too happy to see the birds treated in this manner. I totally agree that hunting be completely banned, sometime ago there was shooting incident in USA, which involved its Vice President –Dick Cheney pulled the trigger hit his lawyer friend while hunting for quail I find it disgusting why can’t they just use plastic quail. I wonder too if Prince Charles is still practising his fox hunting ritual in Scotland.
(Read Amde's biography HERE)
Footnote:
1 The chatty bird is used as a bait to lure down the other birds
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