The Scorpion

This is the name of my friend’s Dad’s car. I’m not sure why that name in particular. It’s a big four-by-four, shockingly has seatbelts, and the boot both opens and closes without the door falling off. I got to drive it back up the hill from the town at the bottom of the hill, Gudalur, a few nights ago. I only stalled once, avoided most pot holes, and managed many a sharp bend, of which there are many on the winding hill road. And, I didn’t use the horn at all. It wasn’t quite as much fun as free riding down the same hill in the sunshine past lush green tea plantations on the back of a motorbike (without a helmet), though.

The scorpion is my animal of the day. This morning, as I was getting dressed, I pulled out my bra from my back pack, and there, minding his/her own business, was a little red scorpion. I thought it was dead to start with as it looked pretty crushed, but then it suddenly came to life. I didn’t really want it to be there, unfortunately, so after assessing the situation at arm’s length, I set it free out of my turret window. (I’m sure Rapunzel never had these challenges to deal with.) So now I’ve had to leave the turret and move downstairs, away from direct roof exposure....and the scorpion reigns free. Apparently I should have killed it and not let it go and make other scorpion babies. Next time.

On the topic of slightly alarming local residents, I had dinner with the local snake-catcher the other day. He’s relocated 400 snakes from homes in a 5-mile radius of Gudalur within the last 2 years. Gosh. He said the trick of catching them is putting them off balance by lifting their tale. Easy.

Oh, and rats. Apart from being nearly everywhere, in the first guesthouse we stayed in, during Wedding I (as opposed to Wedding II which starts on 10th February), we found a dead rat floating in our shower bucket. I did wonder how it quite got there (and when anyone last stayed in the room, bar frogs and live rats). We decided not to look in any of the cupboards at that particular guest-menagery.

Hmm....what other wildlife? Today we saw some elephant poo. I’ve seen quite a lot of elephant poo around the place. I also saw porcupine poo and potentially sloth bear poo (but it looked suspiciously like porcupine poo to my untrained eye). I’ve also seen rat poo.

One wonderful wildlife experience I had, very fortunately whilst in the presence of Bat Woman herself (who incidentally is also a renowned Croatian dance queen), occurred a few weeks ago on the rooftop of a homestay on the edge of Periyar Nature Reserve. The manager of the homestay came and told us just an hour earlier that we MUST go to the roof and see the “Bats! Bats! 6:40!” at 6.40. So we went up at 6:40 (or probably more like 6:38), in case we had actually heard correctly. And woe-behold, first a trickle, then a whole sky of bats silently flew over our heads as the sun went down behind the hills. It must’ve lasted for about 30 minutes. It was so wonderful. The bat was definitely my animal of the day on that day.

(See bats and sunset opposite.)
Who knows what it will be tomorrow.