Weaving through the punishing heat past the Quick Shop, on my two-wheeled international debut. Claire, on the back of the scooter, squeezed my arm and said, ‘Watch out. There’s a snake right there.’
And there it was, a long, green-brown thing, slithering across the road we were troublingly also on. My eyes darted, scanning. Cold fear. It was moving quickly — even for reptiles a good idea when traversing any Indonesian thoroughfare — it’s green-brown length whipping into a bush and rustling it wildly. It was big — I only saw the back end of it and that was all of six feet. How long overall? I shuddered in my seat. My distinctly un-altar boy response was, ‘Fuck me.’ Though to be fair, among St. Roses altar boys, this was conventional.
Seconds earlier and we’d have run over it — subsequent pictorial investigations suggest a cobra — and doubtless it’d have been flung up by the front wheel of our scooter so, like Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, I was face-to-fang with it. We were far from a hospital.
*
Kicking my fins, I tapped Claire before pointing to the ocean floor. Fluttering about, she turned and we now saw it together. A black and white, striped sea snake. It was small and ignored us before zig-zagging off into the warm murk of the Bali sea.
Back aboard the boat and describing it to the local in charge of our snorkelling trip he cheerily explained, ‘If one bites you, you have about five minutes.’ I frowned and he smiled. ‘Enough time to say goodbye.’
It was a Banded Sea Krait and they’re highly neurotoxic, causing paralysis and respiratory failure. A CV to make the entire family proud. Each year hundreds of Thai and Indonesian fishermen perish when dragging up their nets and surprising one of these shy reptiles. They prefer life on the seabed. We all have our limits.
*
In east Bali my running streak broke through the psychological barrier of 900. I mapped out a route through the village and into the deep green countryside and rice fields. It was tough in the harsh humidity and already blaring morning sun — upon returning to our bamboo villa I’d instantly fall into the pool. Of greater concern were the dogs along my daily trail.
Some were apathetic but others were territorial and guarded the narrow path past their homes and temple. These barked with menace, so I avoided eye contact. The hounds were often in poor health and appeared unloved. While I felt sorry for them, I was more worried about my exposed, spindly legs which through canine eyes may have presented as a KFC snack pack.
Rabies is common in Asia and each day on the island there’s an average of 183 suspected rabies bites. Recently, before the authorities intervened — think Atticus Finch — a rabid dog bit eighteen people. Was my running streak worth this risk? If treated quickly, most recover. For others, however, an especially gruesome death arrives following seizures, paralysis, delirium, coma, and most worryingly, excessive salivation.
*
Jogging beside a lush field, I wondered if a muted, underacknowledged purpose of travel is this: to confront our own mortality. Especially as our seemingly gentle tourist activities on this tropical paradise revealed startling, wilder threats.
Is this also why we temporarily abandon the security of our lives — to glimpse, however briefly, the slender edge between beauty and danger? To immerse ourselves in a more brutal ecology — to glance timidly at death while being hand-in-hand with your wife as you swim among the deadly reptiles? Snakes on the good earth and in the usually restorative ocean. Ominous dogs. These encounters jolted me toward gratitude — for the calm, suburban safety of home.
It seemed the island, for all its beauty, had its own curriculum for the living.
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