Maun, Botswana
September 14, 2008
(With photos of the approach to Xugana, a pied kingfisher known at Xugana as Spike and the view from the boat as you move through nearby channels)
Sometimes I check my email and find cheerful notes of encouragement: You’re so brave. You’re so adventurous. You’re a risk-taker.
“Aren’t you ever scared?” they (i.e., you) ask.
To which I can only reply, “What do you think!???”
Let me tell you a story about this intrepid traveler.
It happened at Xugana Island Lodge in the Okavango Delta last month. I had settled into the Pilot One room. That’s not the fancy digs for guests; it’s for pilots and management. The accommodation is comfortable but spare and shall we say a bit more rustic than the charming bungalows where guests stay. I like Pilot One. I spent most of June living there during my volunteer assignment.
So I was back. By this stage I had many more days of bush living under my belt, but that didn’t mean I was lacking alarm when in the middle of the night I heard serious rustling in my room. Whatever it was, it was on a mission to dig into a plastic bag. The intrepid traveler - c’est moi - froze in her REI bug hut. My mind raced. What if the varmint jumped on my bed? How many of them were there in the bedroom outside my bug hut?
My first instinct was to shut my eyes tight and try to ignore the sounds. But then I remembered: I am brave. I am adventurous. I am a risk-taker.
I decided to slip out of bed and confront my intruders, whatever they may be. I feared the worst, because I suddenly remembered I had done the unthinkable: I had forgotten to take an apple out of my red plastic bag on the table across the room. (Note to visitors to Africa: Never leave any food –not so much as crumpet or crumb -- in your room.)
Not only did I have intruders on the premises; I had invited them in with a butler and a silver platter.
The noise stopped when I reluctantly crept out of bed. By now I realized that I didn’t have my contacts on, my glasses were who knows where and my headlamp was in the pocket of my fleece jacket on a chair that seemed a mile away. I couldn’t see a thing. Ah, but here was my trusty MacBook beside me. I hoisted it into the air so that I could shine its tiny green battery light in the corner where the plastic bag lay containing the apple.
Horror.
Two gigantic rats had their noses right up to the bag. Big black rats. One’s tail was standing straight up against the wall. The other’s stretched across a tea tray on the table. My heart stopped. Exactly how much bravery could I muster at this moment? I had to pause before I decided, yes, I was brave enough, adventurous enough and risk-taking enough to deal with this situation. I stepped quickly and quietly with my toes curled up lest anything leap on them as I made my way to the cupboard to retrieve my weapon: a can of Doom. Insect spray that is the African equivalent of amped-up Raid was the best I could do, but it would have to do.
I backed up to my bed, the better to be ready to jump atop it. I leaned backward, stretched my arm forward and, with the tenacity of a New York City firefighter, aimed at the rats and sprayed the heck out of that can of Doom. Then I waited, wondering if the critters would spring toward me in their flight to escape.
How odd. Those rats were paralyzed. How could they hold their breath that long? The room was quiet now. I must have killed them with the Doom. But I wasn’t sure. What to do?
Inspect the situation, that’s what. I sidestepped across the room to my jacket to dig out the headlamp. I found my glasses and put them on. Toes curled up, I moved back to my safety zone beside the bed and beamed the light at the bag.
The rats didn’t jump. They didn’t move. They didn’t breathe, nor could they even if they hadn’t inhaled the poison gas. To my utter astonishment, I had faced up to my fears in the dark and confronted not rats at all. I’d pretty much unloaded the whole can of Doom on what turned out to be my sunglasses (hey, one earpiece unfolded and resting up in the air truly looks like a tail in the dark!) and my Coolpix camera (hey, in the dark that strap on the camera case absolutely looks like a rat tail!).
Oh, the indignity of it all, to think that the intrepid traveler finds herself gaining new skill and insight in the bush, only to have her brave act reduced to a cartoon of incompetence. Oh, ignominy.
I tell the tale to say to all of you, my cheerleaders out there: confront your fears, head-on, blindly if necessary. They may not turn out to be as scary as you think.
P.S. I made fun of myself to all who would listen the next morning. (Poor Audrey visiting from Texas suffered through the story more times than she could count.) Upon my return to Pilot One the next afternoon, I found a mousetrap set in my room. I queried Mark and Lizl Carlsen, the lodge managers, to see if they had placed it there to gig me. Good joke at my bumbling expense, right? Heh. Heh.
Nope.
Turns out it was the housekeeper. Well, well, well, it seems that the room did indeed have mice or rats or critters of unknown identity leaving traces of their visits behind.
Let the record reflect: Should the rodents return, no matter how wee the hour, no matter how dark the night, I am ready for them, Rambo-style.
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