Sitting in the office tapping away..... In my ear there is distant barking.
Five minutes later, I push back from my screen and listen... Distant...
'woof.........woof.......woof'.'
Jeez, that feckin dog has been barking for ages. Don't think it's one of ours. Too far away.
'woof.........woof.......woof'.'
I'd had enough of the screen anyway. I decide to investigate, grab my sandals, out the door.
The house here is surrounded by thick grassland, and bush. Way over the back, the land becomes dense undergrowth. During the summer months this grows rapidly and wildly. I followed the barking to way over the back, to a densely overgrown part of the plot. I begin to realise that all the noise is coming from our dogs.
The barking gets louder as I draw nearer. Something is up. They have found something. Trouble is, the nearer I get, the thicker the bush gets.
(right through that lot) I try to quicken my pace as I fight my way through the bush, in my poxy sandals. I can see the dogs are quite a bit ahead, and they are freaking out. I can't see what they are barking at but I begin to worry, they are all pretty frenzied, god knows what's in there. I climb over hard earth, tree roots and the bushes, shouting at the dogs. Get away! Oi. BAI BAI BAI!
I gradually begin to see they have something circled in a small brook in front of me. As I get closer, I look downwards, past the bushes and branches, and that is when I see it.
It's skin is scaly, and black, heaving in front of me in the muddy water. It had bronze coloured diamond patterning along the length of its back. It was alien. Jesus Christ. It was getting on half a metre thick.
It is the largest snake I have ever seen.....
If you could have seen my face, my eyes must have been bulging out of their sockets. I stepped away instinctively whilst shouting at the top of my voice for the dogs to back off. All I could think to do was hurl clods of hard earth at them to try to get them to run away. As I did, the largest dog, Joe, disappeared completely from view into the depths of the undergrowth, and all I can hear is thrashing, and a deep, guttural growl.
Surrounded on all sides by bush, frenzied barking, snarling, and the black scaled monstrosity in the water, I was hit with what can only be described as a giddy, deep, primeval fear.......(i.e I nearly shat myself)
I ran. Back to the house. I hoped the dogs would follow.... The more obedient ones did, whilst the others remained with the beast in the bush. I got to the house, shouted at everyone in earshot to tell them what I had seen, picked up a large stick and grabbed a push bike to ride back. Two of the guys here ran with me.
We got back to the bush where the dogs could still be heard barking. I carried on trying to call them off, and as we got closer to the brook, I pointed to the others where this thing was. One of the guys shot through the undergrowth, delving right through so he could look back at this thing from up stream. Finally he shouted out 'OK OK, Duangan Doer Tong yai, Duangan Doer Tong yai'.
'Big Lizard'.
It turned out, my 'snake' was a big monitor lizard.
What I had seen (and what had scared the hell outta me) was the monitors back, and tail... Once we realised we hadn't found the biggest Thai snake in history, things calmed down a little, the dogs calmed too, and one by one retreated back out of the bush. After we had a bit of a relieved chuckle, I crept upstream and got this shot of our lizard.
He was obviously still alarmed, as I knelt down, several metres away, he raised up, puffed his cheeks out and let out a powerful hiss..... I was gone.
I checked back several hours later to make sure he wasn't still there, as I wasn't sure if the dogs had done any real damage to the poor bugger. But he was long gone.
What a moment! Away from the roads, houses, buildings and people, Thailand is still home to this hidden world, one that has existed for thousands of years.
For that brief moment, surrounded by wild beasts, snarling and scaly monsters, Mother Nature was bearing down on me, completely out of control............
