An Attempt to Impress - Episode 2

We continued walking along the damp, leaf covered path.  Now that we all were infinitely aware of creepy crawlies, we continued to check our extremities after every couple of steps.  The mind does strange things like that sometimes: you hear on the news that a violent criminal is loose - every sound that night wakes you from a shallow sleep even though you know the odds that a violent criminal stopping by the pastor's house at 2:00 in the morning are relatively low.  These leeches, they weren't very big, quite small really in comparison with some that I have seen before, grew in our subliminal consciousness so that eventually, instead of taking in the beautiful sights and sounds, we were hurrying to the end destination missing many vistas along the way. 

As we neared our final destination - the Sandstone Cliffs - (which turned out to be a few rock overhangs along the path) I noticed a woman sitting inside a relatively large cave along side the path.  Wearing khaki shorts, a pink top and tennis shoes with small booty socks peering over the top, the woman had brought along on her hike a bulky newspaper to read.  My first thought was, Have fun with the rhinoceros ants when they clean all the meat off your ankles because you've been sitting still - what an idiot.  My second thought didn't occur to me until after we passed the 'Walls' and waded through knee high grass on a mini flattened grass pathway in an attempt to find these so-called Sandstone Cliffs (God knows what kind of creepy, crawly things lay in wait in the grass...).  Finding a gravel road on the other side of the grass, I noticed movement to my right and a middle aged man - to me that's a fifty-something - strolling down towards us with binoculars around his neck.

Ornithologist.  That explains the newspaper.

I think ornithologists - birdwatchers - have to be some of the most patient, and strange, people on the planet.  Imagine walking along the path with an ornithologist, or worse yet standing still on a muddy track filled with spiders and leaches and ants, Oh My! with an ornithologist while he points to a tiny little black, blue and red sparrow seventy-five feet away.  The ornithologist has not thought to bring binoculars for you, no sir, so you casually, patiently scan the dense canopy of forest for a speck of color for the tooth-billed bowerbird.  Your ornithologist mate is dancing excitedly but you are much more interested in the ants which are crawling up his socks to shred his calves like piranhas. 

We turned around because we ultimately recognized that the Sandstone Cliffs were indeed the little overhanging caves that the newspaper reading woman was sitting in.  As we passed back through the gauntlet of grass (defying death again if you ask me), I noticed that the middle-aged ornithologist was following us.  It was evident that he and she were together.  Talk about a couple that knows each other.  She knew exactly how long it was going to take for him either to spot the Atherton Scrubwren or the Victoria's Riflebird, probably just long enough to get through the top stories and into the editorials.  On his return, he would have been content by his conquest, and she happy to have conquered the content of her newspaper.  Hand in hand, side by side they would have backtracked along the Australian version of the Yellow Brick Road delighted by their silence and the noise of the birds, oblivious to any dangers that might pop their heads up along the way.

They had figured out how to overcome cracking boredom in their marriage (or so I postulated by my brief fourteen second visual in passing them.)

As we continued back towards the parking lot, a little brisker pace at this point thinking that somehow if we just walked faster the leeches wouldn't be able to attach to our shoes, Josephine made a noise quite similar to the small little yelp that I let escape in what was now known as the Elvis Incident.  "It scared me," she said pointing to the brush just to the side of the road.

"What was it?" Christine asked.
"A snake," Josephine responded with fingers curled up in front of her lips.  I wouldn't have put my fingers anywhere near my lips.  Who knows what kind of deadly bacteria is floating in the Australian air waiting to cling to my fingernails?

Silently I rolled my eyes and looked up to heaven.  What?  Can't we just walk out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death?  Do you really need to prepare a table in front of our enemies?

Christine moved closer to Josephine.  I hung back.  "What color was it?"  Christine's question.  My question:  Was it big enough to swallow you?

"I think it was a green tree snake.  Look," she pointed to a nearby vine, "there it is."
Whew.  Harmless unless you're a mouse.  "Yes, it definitely looks like a green tree snake."

Let's just clear one thing up now.  As creative as Australians are about naming their birds, they are equally uncreative about naming their deadly reptiles.  For instance - the second most deadly snake in the world is the 'Brown Snake.'  Does that sound like an animal whose poison can kill you in an hour?  A brown snake?  Why not call it 'Slithering Death?'  The Red-Bellied Black snake?  You guessed it: it's got a red belly on its black body.  Pretty tame name for a snake that can take you out with one bite.  Dark Assassin would be better.  Inland Taipan?  Deadliest snake in the world?  Sounds like southeast Asian restaurant if you asked me.  The Inland Taipan doesn't bite you once, but like a machine gun it nails you multiple times per second injecting the strongest snake venom in the world.  My name for them?  Venomous Death Stick.  After doing some research on the VDS it was interesting to note that the authors of listverse.com say that one bite from a VDS can kill 12,000 guinea pigs.  How they did that research, I don't know.  Did they line up fifteen thousand guinea pigs and at 11,999 they thought to themselves, "Is this ever going to stop?"  Another interesting, horrifying tidbit about the VDS is that before the antivenom was created, the receiver was assured of death within one hour of the bite.  No survival.  Yippee.  Anyway, the only good and decent name for one of Australia's venomous reptiles is the Death Adder.  Fitting.

Just a green tree snake.  Ha ha.  Everyone's having a good time.  Now we started to walk even faster.  What could possibly be around the corner?  A Koala with a death wish?

As we hurried back up the path, upwards out of the Shadowy Death Valley, Josephine came running back to us.  "Another snake.  It's by Greta."

This time, Josephine looked worried and as Christine and I hurried up the Yellow Brick Road, sure enough standing up about two feet from Greta's leg was a thoroughly unconvincing small snake which looked like it was enjoying a lovely little stroll in the woods.  Elsa, Josephine and I stepped back from it while Greta remained poised one leg almost in the air, one on the ground.  Unsure of whether she should attempt to sprint or just stay still, Greta was caught in herpetical purgatory.  No one really knows what the suggested practice is, but usually one's first instinct is to run.  Somehow, she remained calm in the presence of that little...

Brown Snake.

My first instinct was to take a picture.  Ashamed, I am.  Someday later in life she would have enjoyed seeing that moment of defying death, the happy little snake smiling broadly at her indecision.  My second instinct was to pick up a big stick and whack the Slithering Death to, um, death.  "Don't move," Christine said.  Obviously, being a native Australian she had had multiple opportunities of studying this in school.  I'm sure one of their classes surely was "Herpetology 101 - What to do when (not if) a deadly snake tries to eat you."

If I was Greta, I'd have already moved.  Greta lost her balance briefly and her suspended foot jiggled which caused the snake to flinch.  Now the thing was looking serious.  No more Mr. Nice Snake.  Come on, Christine, I thought to myself.  Just let her get out of there.

"All right, Greta," Christine said calmly, "What you're going to do is, on the count of three, jump and run forward up the road.  You got it?"  Greta's adrenaline filled eyes were already filling with tears.

"One..."  The snake perked up its head.  Maybe its mother used the same technique with him when it was littler and misbehaving.

"Two..."  I was mouthing the words with her.

"THREE!"  I think Greta could have dunked a basketball.  As she scurried up the path, the little brown snake looked around perplexedly as if to say, 'What just happened?'  It didn't move.  Honestly, it seemed like it was questioning why we weren't all just moving passed his sleeping spot.  Now I had my stick ready and prepared.  Multiple different scenarios had already traversed my brain patterns.  In one, the snake had attacked Christine and I had, because of my lightning fast reflexes, swung the stick like a baseball bat and knocked the head off the snake.  In another one, I had placed the end of the stick on the snake's head and after grasping the slithering serpent in my hand, I bit its head off.  Real life was much different, though.  Christine made these 'shooing' motions with her hands and feet which did very little to deter the snake from its perch.  It was my turn to save the day.

With the stick, I flicked dirt into the snake's face from a delightfully safe distance.  But in my own mind, I had not only saved the life of my wife, but also my children and, pretty much anyone else who was wandering on the Yellow Brick Road.  They could all congratulate me later with a tickertape parade. 

Christine rushed past the place where the snake had been and embraced our crying almost teenage daughter.  The only thing I could think of now was that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indiana Jones has to make his way through the walls of the tomb and there are snakes crawling out of everything.  All he has is a burnt out torch and a whip. 

I had a stick. 

"All right," I announced.  "Let's go everyone."  With that, we started running for the car.  We still had almost half a mile to go yet, uphill at that, but we were sprinting as if the Sauron, the Dark Lord, was chasing us with the Eye.  I led the way and because my mind was working in overdrive, every freaking stick seemed to be one of the world's deadliest snakes waiting to take a bite out of us.  The only good thing was that I had stopped thinking about spiders, leeches and ants Oh My! 

About two hundred meters from the parking lot, just as we were ready to reenter the Promised Land, another tourist came walking down the path.  He was of Asian descent, alone and, get this, wearing thongs, shorts and a tank top.  I was in a hurry but silently I prayed for his family that they would have a good and decent funeral for this young, foolish tourist.  Would they find the remnants of his fang punctured body, sucked dry by leeches, covered by fearsome spiders and stripped of epidermis by skin eating rhinoceros ants?  Christine actually stopped to talk to him - what a thoughtful woman - I just wanted to get out of there with most of my body and soul intact. 

Needless to say, when we reached the top, we dropped to our knees.  Not to thank God, but to take our shoes off and check for leeches.  Oh, we thanked God also, and I apologized to him for thinking of him secondly, but enough was enough.  After the leech search, we looked at each other, thankful to be alive and whole, but I was proud of myself that I had saved the entire family by walking up the path first - with the stick.  2.  Saved child's life.

Check.