Read Online Predators I Have Known by Alan Dean Foster - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Alan Dean Foster
Tags: Personal Memoirs, Biography & Autobiography, Novelists; American, Adventure Travel, Predatory Animals
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Salvador. The sharply defined silhouettes of tents stood out against the surrounding chaotic verdure. Directed to our individual peaked quarters, Mark and I collapsed on our respective sleeping bags. On, not in. The suffocating humidity rendered covering of any kind not only superfluous but intolerable.
Arising the following morning to the music of effervescent songbirds and the prehistoric caw of turkey-size hoatzins, we soon discovered that the bulk of Boris’s time was taken up with supervising the construction of the lodge. Just as he had told us, it was still very much in the initial stages of construction. Proudly, he showed us where the visitors’ rooms were going to go, the hygienic facilities, the meeting and dining center, the library. At present, every one of these was represented only by mahogany pillars that had been painstakingly driven into the reluctant ground.
“The whole complex is being built of salvaged mahogany.” He grinned. “It may be the only all-mahogany lodge in the world. Ecologically sound, because all of the wood is salvage taken from the river. Also, mahogany is the only local wood white ants [termites] won’t eat.”
We had (I cannot say enjoyed) our meals in a large communal tent that I quickly dubbed la casa de los mosquitos , because there always seemed to be more mosquitoes humming around within than without. The mosquitoes of Manú have their own happy hour, during which time they leisurely sample whatever purported insect repellent you happen to have ineffectually slathered on your poor, defenseless body in the faint hope of dissuading them from pursuing their natural inclinations to act like a thousand diminutive Draculas. Having sipped their fill of your inadequate repellent and no doubt compared its vintage with that of previous years, they then turn their attention to the evening’s main course: you. At such moments, I would grit my teeth and remind myself that the ferocious biting bugs of Manú are one reason the region remains relatively pristine and has not been overrun by prospectors and poachers.
Drenched in tepid perspiration day and night, we would have killed for a five-minute shower. As yet, the only showers at the site existed in Boris’s plans for the lodge. But there was an alternative, if one was fast enough and brave enough and desperate enough to make use of it.
We were told that the diurnal mosquitoes of Manú clock out at precisely five-fifteen p.m. while their nocturnal counterparts don’t report for work until five-thirty. This provided a fifteen-minute window—no more, no less—during which time every one of Boris’s workers flung off their clothes like a clutch of Wall Street bankers suddenly converted to nudism, plunged madly into the lake, splashed about like a bunch of demented day-trippers from a Lima asylum, erupted from the water, and hastily reclothed themselves.
In the course of our first evening in Manú, Mark and I observed this frenzied and highly localized ritual with a mixture of amazement, envy, and trepidation. This was, after all, my first time in the Amazon and I was . . . leery.
“I guess there are no piranhas in the lake,” I told Boris, who had chosen to forgo that evening’s collective ablutions.
“Oh no,” he corrected me cheerfully. “The cocha is full of piranhas. But they don’t bother you unless the water level is very low or there is blood in the water. All that crazed stuff you see in the movies: That’s just Hollywood. If you want, tomorrow we’ll go fishing for piranhas. They’re very good eating.”
Uh-huh , I told myself. And they no doubt think the reverse is true . By day three, however, the accumulated caked sweat on my corpus was making me feel like an Egyptian mummy imprisoned in a California sauna, and the promise of cool water had grown too tempting to be ignored any longer. So it was that Mark and I found ourselves anxiously lined up facing the lakeshore along with Boris’s milling mob of local
Arising the following morning to the music of effervescent songbirds and the prehistoric caw of turkey-size hoatzins, we soon discovered that the bulk of Boris’s time was taken up with supervising the construction of the lodge. Just as he had told us, it was still very much in the initial stages of construction. Proudly, he showed us where the visitors’ rooms were going to go, the hygienic facilities, the meeting and dining center, the library. At present, every one of these was represented only by mahogany pillars that had been painstakingly driven into the reluctant ground.
“The whole complex is being built of salvaged mahogany.” He grinned. “It may be the only all-mahogany lodge in the world. Ecologically sound, because all of the wood is salvage taken from the river. Also, mahogany is the only local wood white ants [termites] won’t eat.”
We had (I cannot say enjoyed) our meals in a large communal tent that I quickly dubbed la casa de los mosquitos , because there always seemed to be more mosquitoes humming around within than without. The mosquitoes of Manú have their own happy hour, during which time they leisurely sample whatever purported insect repellent you happen to have ineffectually slathered on your poor, defenseless body in the faint hope of dissuading them from pursuing their natural inclinations to act like a thousand diminutive Draculas. Having sipped their fill of your inadequate repellent and no doubt compared its vintage with that of previous years, they then turn their attention to the evening’s main course: you. At such moments, I would grit my teeth and remind myself that the ferocious biting bugs of Manú are one reason the region remains relatively pristine and has not been overrun by prospectors and poachers.
Drenched in tepid perspiration day and night, we would have killed for a five-minute shower. As yet, the only showers at the site existed in Boris’s plans for the lodge. But there was an alternative, if one was fast enough and brave enough and desperate enough to make use of it.
We were told that the diurnal mosquitoes of Manú clock out at precisely five-fifteen p.m. while their nocturnal counterparts don’t report for work until five-thirty. This provided a fifteen-minute window—no more, no less—during which time every one of Boris’s workers flung off their clothes like a clutch of Wall Street bankers suddenly converted to nudism, plunged madly into the lake, splashed about like a bunch of demented day-trippers from a Lima asylum, erupted from the water, and hastily reclothed themselves.
In the course of our first evening in Manú, Mark and I observed this frenzied and highly localized ritual with a mixture of amazement, envy, and trepidation. This was, after all, my first time in the Amazon and I was . . . leery.
“I guess there are no piranhas in the lake,” I told Boris, who had chosen to forgo that evening’s collective ablutions.
“Oh no,” he corrected me cheerfully. “The cocha is full of piranhas. But they don’t bother you unless the water level is very low or there is blood in the water. All that crazed stuff you see in the movies: That’s just Hollywood. If you want, tomorrow we’ll go fishing for piranhas. They’re very good eating.”
Uh-huh , I told myself. And they no doubt think the reverse is true . By day three, however, the accumulated caked sweat on my corpus was making me feel like an Egyptian mummy imprisoned in a California sauna, and the promise of cool water had grown too tempting to be ignored any longer. So it was that Mark and I found ourselves anxiously lined up facing the lakeshore along with Boris’s milling mob of local
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