Saturday evenings are laziness-embodied! One sees a movie or two, gulps some junk food and cuddles up on the recliner watching the late night movie or the other! No one wishes to have off-putting moments of ‘excitement’, ‘bewilderment’ and ‘astonishment’ on a balmy Saturday Night! But that was exactly what I had to undergo yesterday night…..
We’ve a backyard that’s second only to the rainforests of Brazil in terms of overgrowth of all kinds of foilage. Right from coconut trees to jackfruit trees to weed and hemp shrubs, there are all kinds of greenery! And a fair sprinkling of wild creatures too. Not the feline types but the creepy-crawlies. Every month or so a tarantula or a salamander or a snake would lose its way and wander into the house unaware of its dangerous inhabitants. The bravura uncles and cousins would deftly catch them up and return them to their habitat. This was a few years ago. We’ve been untouched by any surprise visit of any of them creatures since a few years….until yesterday i.e.
A Krait (or might have been a Viper) had lost its way into the kitchen and was wondering how to get back to its home while reposing on one of the fruit baskets. It was dark save for a dim nightbulb and something amiss was realized only when the basket moved. The lights were switched on and lo and behold! There was this Krait in all its bewilderment. A shriek and a shout later, I and bro’ were on the scene and ready for rescue. I was feeling confident enough so as to catch it by its tail and get it back to its natural habitat…something a la Steve Irwin. But the folks would have none of it! It was poisonous and might bite me anytime….so I must banish any thoughts of catching it with my bare hands. Resigned, I pinned it against the wall with a stick and stunned it with a few blows (hoping I don’t kill it!) before sidling it into an empty cardboard and dumped it across the street into a drain (owing to the darkness and who-knows-what-else-might-be-lurking, I wasn’t allowed to take it back into its natural habitat i.e. our Backyard) Continue reading
