Day 3: Jungle Night

So brave Ipshita, quaking in her wellingtons, safely placed between two of her friends in the long line of people (there were 10-11 of us) set off into he black. Now. You who are reading this must be able to understand how dark it was. It was full moon, but the canopy was so thick that without torches it was the blackest black. I expect it got a little blacker on no moon days, but not by much. Our guide, enthusiastic and keen, showed us how to spot the fauna. The trick is this: you hold the torch at eye level and shine it outwards and look for answering gleams. These, are the eyes of the beasties. Red for frog or snakes. Bright white for cat. Blue, yellow, white for spider. He said more, but I've forgotten. Immediately everyone was off flashing their torches wildly into the unknown. I stayed safely between two people. It worked though, the guide showed us and we found ourselves a huntsman spider. A beautiful lithe animal which made me quake some more. We tramped about and then he made us stop. We were standing in a pool of water. He shone his torch on it. Around our feet upon this water,water-spiders hunted. I nearly jumped. In fact I'm not sure if I didn't clutch someone and back away a little and then start again as my backing away brought me close to more. They were wonderful though. Skimming the surface tension, they worked coolly and scrabbled fast in the water when they caught something. Very lovely.

We saw some harlequin tree frogs after this. Three of them in fact. These are pretty rare. Our guide found us a gliding lizard which was resting on a large leaf and seemed a little put-out at being photographed. Sharon found a spider right next to where I was at this time. I quietly hurried on. We saw a baby tarantula (not so big pale and fuzzy) and then a full grown tarantula (BIG, dark and fuzzy). The big one was larger than an adult Man's open palm. He was high up on a tree trunk, so I could look at him/her openly. We came to a deeper pond. We were asked if we'd like to wade in. But the water level was too high for us city-slackers and we sheepishly declined. Our guide went in and went out of view (an easy thing to do in a body of water with trees growing in it in the pitch black of night). We caught a gleam from his torch every now and then and felt at ease, though come to think of it, we were standing in a rather close knot together. Suddenly we heard a lot of splashing from him and exclamations. He was after something (was something after him??). He came back, pretty wet looking disappointed. He had found a big scorpion but couldn't catch it and bring it back to us and that was the battle royale we heard. Our respect for him went up ten-fold. Catch a scorpion?!

We tramped along and we found a snake. Due to the fact it was dark, we were using yellow torchlight and the snake's head was not visible from where we were, it could either be a pit viper or a more harmless variety. Brave Guide (BG from now on) poked it with a stick. Sleepily it uncurled. Annoyedly it regarded us, stupidly we stared back. Still no clue. It was very awkwardly placed for observation. BG poked at it some more, more persistently. Suddenly the snake struck out at the stick with extreme ferocity. We were taken aback, transformation from the sleepy unknown woodland snake to certified Malayan pit viper was too fast for comfort. We retreated a step. Complacently the snake eyed us and then curled back to sleep. BG was thrilled (not at having been attacked by a snake) but this was the first pit viper he had seen at Uncle Tan's. We smugly took the credit and we walked on, leaving the poor harassed snake alone. We saw some sleeping birds, who looked like peaches with tails and some bats hanging right over our heads on protruding twigs. We noticed BG poking about in the cracks of tree with a narrow twig. Why, we asked, with all our city naivete. Because, he said, while poking around, they hold scorpions. Almost before he finished his sentence, a 5 inch scorpion ran out. More battle royale. If I had to write down my impressions of then, it would go something like a saga of old and great monsters battling it out with the defiant man. In reality they chased each other around in circles till BG managed to get it to run over his hand. And then it ran up his arm till he got his other hand beneath it. Very Steve-Irwin like. What about the poison, we asked. Keep your hand under it, he said, won't get bitten then; anyone wants to hold? Willie went first. The irate scorpion scuttled into his hand and posed for a photograph. The he was made to scuttle on to Jon's hand and posed again there. I wanted to go, but I was hesitant. However ignoring my silly fear I pied up and the scorpion angrily scuttled from his hand to mine. I smiled widely confidently and the camera clicked somewhere at my elbow. Looking back: This is the distorted photo of me and look at that hysterical smile on my face. I must have been more nervous than I thought. Anyway, it prickled as it scuttled. Poor thing, made to scoot from palm to palm while everyone kept carefully out of tail's reach. How he must have been dying to give us all a good sting.

Some more frogs later, we managed to get back to camp at 10:30. I took another bath at this time. Too much in the forest at night. I was really grubby. Tired as I was, after my bath I came back into the chicken coop and fell fast asleep, dreaming of a rocking boat.