A leech inside my mouth and other memories

My daughter looked up at me across the dining table, over the remnants of her dinner. Her eyebrows arched up, her face looking mildly exasperated broke into a wry smile and she said, “ There is a leech in my dinner.”

Sure, enough, there was a determined character loping across a minefield of sticky pasta.

In the best impersonation of my role mode, Calvin’s dad ( what was his name, btw ? ), I intoned – Big deal. It will build character.

A minute later, I stretched my hand to take the napkin and saw a thick guy who had encircled my index finger, thick, somnolent and bursting with my blood.

“Character ? “, my daughter enquired.

****

We had a few weeks left before my daughter left for college and I thought that was a good opportunity to sneak in a small trip.

The monsoons had got off to a riotous start and rather than going somewhere and being cooped up inside a room unable to do anything, I felt it made a lot more sense to go to a place which is a monsoon destination.

The Western Ghats.

( That logic might have some post facto flavour to it, and the choice might have got something to do with exposing her to my love for the outdoors, but never mind…these are but pesky details )

****

The property ( Wayanad Wild ) was an extremely pretty one.

It isn’t a property that will burst into the scene and assault you with its stunning beauty. It crept up unobtrusively, in the middle of deep, dark greenery all around you, over narrow lanes where vehicles passing each other have to squeeze through, past an ordinary security gate to the typical Kerala style understated reception.

Dark, dense bushes observe you quietly from all around you, as you walk up the narrow winding inclines to your room. When you look out of your room, or step into the balcony, you are greeted with an assault of green. The overwhelming sense you get is that this is a property that has been built around the landscape and not one where the landscape has been pummeled to suit your design.

It drizzled almost throughout our stay. The tree cover usually provided sufficient cover as we – or to be more accurate, I -  panted up the inclines in the rain. The rain left the paved tracks glistening, the shrubs looked clean and fresh and gleaming while water dripped off it reluctantly.

Clean. Fresh. All of a sudden, a forgotten memory from my childhood meandered in.

Anne of the Famous Five from Enid Blyton, had once exclaimed when they woke up to a bright morning after a stormy night that it seemed as if the world had returned from a laundry.

Clean. Fresh.

****

The night was eerily quiet other than the steady sound of rain. And then it explodes into a musical cacophony.

A cicada makes his presence heard and a million cicadas start screaming their lungs out, keen to ensure that he alone doesn't hog the limelight. The frogs croaking for a mate intensify their desperation. Some, deep and guttural. Some going tik-tik-tik in a slightly shriller tone. Or, it could be the persistent and oddly mesmerizing sound of water dropping that was actually the croak of the water drop frog.

We crouched under our umbrellas peering at a variable bush frog call, its vocal sacs bulging to a scarily impressive size. We feared that it might just go ‘pop’ at some point.

“ Its so loud,” my daughter whispered and tried to record the cacophony on her phone.

The recording couldn’t do justice to what we were hearing.

****

I have often marveled at the guides in any sort of wilderness at their ability to sight a subject.

Once, in Kenya, we made our way to a faraway tree because our guide thought he had seen a flick of a tail over the tall grass. Sure enough, there were two male lions deep in slumber under the tree. How many times would we have stopped in the denser forests of India because the naturalist with us was positive that he had seen some movement, and then watch slack-jawed as a tiger nonchalantly steps into view.

However, nothing… I mean, absolutely, nothing compares to the naturalists who are in the Western ghats trained to spot frogs and snakes. These guys – the frogs and snakes, I mean – are often impossibly small. Some of the frogs would be no bigger than your thumbnail. They would obviously be somewhere deep in the bushes. The snakes will either be resting in some crevice or threading their way through the shrubs. Most of these snakes aren’t exactly like a python. They are slender and reasonably small in length. Not easy to spot.

And, just in case, all these don’t sound impressive enough as a challenge, we are out looking for them in pitch dark. Armed only with a headlamp, our naturalists will coolly pick off one subject after the other.

Amazing, really.

****

We walked on the trail, rain falling down on us, following the naturalist as he occasionally flashed his headlamp at the odd bush on either side. I love being outdoors but walking through the woods at night has a different feel to it. Its magical. It is as if we have left our comfort zones and have stepped into their world.

We knelt down and peered under the rocks as the laser lit a few rather large scorpions in a ghostly blue light. We walked over to the water body since the chances were high that we would see gliding frogs near by ( We did ). We watched wide eyed as a wound up Thackeray’s cat snake gingerly felt the air around it, chuckled at the winged gliding frog comically glaring at us and wondered how on earth did our naturalist spot the Niligiri forest lizard in the pitch darkness.

We clambered up slippery slopes, ducking under offending branches looking for the frogs whose presence was announced by their loud croaks and squinted deep into the dark bushes trying to figure out where on earth the tiny reed frog was which the naturalist was talking about.

And we kept removing the leeches.

*****

As I climbed up a dense and slippery slope, I felt something loose inside my mouth. It was on the inside of my lower lip. It felt as if a fleshy part had torn itself and I found myself wondering. When would that have happened ? I didn’t recall accidentally biting my lip, there definitely was no pain that should normally result from such an accident.

I decided to check it later in the room and focused on photographing the glandular frog we had found.

Once I was back on the trail, I could not ignore this loose piece of flesh and decided to tear it out. Using my teeth I pried it out and spat it out. I was mildly surprised that the removal process didn’t cause me any pain.

A few minutes later, I felt some sensation on my cheek, close to my mouth. One of my hands was holding an umbrella and the other the camera and I requested the naturalist to take a look.

“ Oh, it’s a leech.” He reached out and plucked it off.

“ There’s another one…” and plucked something off my chin.” You might have got these in the dense undergrowth.”

And then the penny dropped as realization dawned upon me on what the ‘fleshy’ piece that I spat out, was actually was.

I should have captured a pic of my daughter’s face when I told her.

*****

I am not much into macro photography, but here are a few images that I took.

I love going out at night, trudging through rain and water looking for these tiny creatures. However, am always wondering about the extent to which one would be disturbing them for our photography. Somehow, I feel that these tiny creatures will be getting a lot more stressed than the larger mammals we go out to photograph.

Many photographers assure me otherwise. The naturalist here felt they do get stressed but recover soon and that they recognize the signs and when stress happens, they move on.

Dunno.

I took the camera out only once. A few pics from there…where I hope, we didn’t stress these guys out much.

I will be taking a break for the next few weeks. This newsletter has been more or less regular for the better part of the last three years and I absolutely love writing it and listening to all your feedback.

A longish family trip is coming up and I would want to focus on that and not worry about what I should write the following fortnight.

See you sometime in September , hope you manage without reading my posts :)

A winged gliding frog glares at us, as if daring us to come closer

Holding on for dear life is this Malabar Gliding Frog

A pit viper checks us out

The Thackeray's cat snake is a rather pretty thing for sure !

All of them do appear as if they are hanging on for dear life, don't they ? An Ochlandrae Reed frog

The winged gliding frog appears all set for a jump

Will any visit to the Ghats be complete without an image of the pretty green vine snake ?

Yeahh....that's impressive. A Variable bush frog is desperate for a mate

And, in case you weren't impressed enough....

And this is how the guy looks when he is resting his vocal chords

The Nilgiri Forest Lizard studiously ignores us