Gruffy, P'Thai, Sii-Dam, lately
Brovic - Blogging Since 1903
3.2.11
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - Heyyyyyy, when I said 'diapers and a gallon of milk' a couple of posts back, ha, I didn't mean to let on I was still having babies. Nope. Not me. That was intended as a literal, but generic parental statement, and we were talking about 'things' a person needs; diapers and a gallon of milk for, gee, several years straight, isn't it?
Seems like babies, adolescents, and adults are happiest when all their needs are taken care of, with many carrying the childneed right through on out to the grave. A tisket, a tasket, then a green and yellow casket. And what would be your final wish?
"I'm gonna sayyyy...'Master of the univer'...no...wait."
Is that your final answer?
There may be some who are thinking, 'he isn't talking to me...this time.'* But you can see it played out around you, right? how infantile we can be when we get our way thwarted. Never mind the everyday zen, those retreats, and the however many years of TM did you say?
I am happiest when...fill in the blank...'when everything is going my way.'
And so a person could say, 'world peace' is their way, or something noble and magnanimous. Think we could have something if enough people wanted it? Anything?
.
Man, I gotta tell ya, I don't care for snakes or any reptile in general, but today the dog, the one that's been hanging around taking Gruffy's share, since Gruffy decided to hang out across the lake at Karl's Lakeview Bungalows, since there are three bitches there, and no males, and the girls in the kitchen keep feeding him, along with all the other guests...and when I pulled up over there for breakfast last week, he came charging up like my long lost buddy, and I told him, "SO!", and he got this really sheepish look on his face, put his muzzle on my knee and said sadly with his eyes, 'you understand...' which I did, but he sure as hell can't just DROP IN spontaneously and out of the blue, expecting his daily handout.
Gave up three square meals a day to go beg tourist tables over at Mon's restaurant. Mon and her sister, Roon, feed him, but Karl doesn't want himl to stay, although he admits he likes having a male in the mix.
"During the low season, that's another mouth to feed," he said.
Anyway, this other dog, a white with brown spots female Thai 'Ridge Back' from the temple with her ribs showing, has been laying around in the sun over here and waiting for Gruffy's share, like I said, and she was barking out there today, enough to make me take a look.
Lo and behold, what was it? I didn't have my glasses. Looked like a big lizard's tail in the crust of an old stump out there. I drew closer, and what the hell? Holy Smokes! It'safuckingsnake. 'I hope it's not a cobra,' I thought and tried to see it's head. There wasn't a head. There was a huge swelling at the other end with a rat's ass and legs sticking out.
When I got close enough to actually make out something I'd never seen before in my life, I finally saw the head, tiny, atop this mass of....and when I saw him, he was looking right at me, and you know how snakes are psychic and everything, and he immediately began disgorging the rat, leaving it in a grey mucous-covered lump of yuuuck, and headed without delay for that hole in the middle of the stump, and within a matter of, oh, about fifteen seconds, the whole show was over.
Except for the rat. What am I saying.? EsPECIALLY for the rat, the show was over. I checked later, and it was still there, covered with ants.
Whaddaya thinka that?
So, yeah, you'll encounter snakes over here from time to time. Last month a cobra sleeping between two sacks of coconut fiber suddenly awakened when the nursery lady pulled the top sack off. He began a slow sleepy slither away, but she quickly grabbed a stick and pulled him back out in the open, whereupon he coiled, rose up, and just when I was thinking, 'I wonder if it's a cobra,' fanned out his hood.
Remembering that they can blind you at twelve feet with their spit, I immediately began a roadrunner-esque back-pedal, a Muhammad Ali bob and weave shuffle, knowing that cobras can't get a fix on a moving target.
As he was following me with his tongue, the nursery lady off to his right was really the one he should have concerned himself with, posing the greater threat, for she dispatched him forthright, leaning over and striking him across the neck, if a snake has a neck, with her lips pressed together in an impressive display of firm determination of intent to kill if I ever saw it.
He went limp with that first blow, stunned and severely incapacitated, although it wasn't fatal. That came moments later across a log. She laughed about it as she tallied up the bill for the coconut fiber and potting soil.
'Ha ha. Sa-nake,' she kept saying and laughing at my obvious discomfort, raising her arm, bent at the elbow, her hand bent forward at the wrist, making a shaking snake's head. I was still trying to discretely brush the goosebumps off my arms, and shake the chill from my spine.
- end
*I'm always talking to you. Every time.
Who? Me? Yes. You.
**'Gruffy' was a nickname given by Claudia. 'P Thai' was the formal name given to him by his owner, who moved back to Takuapa when the high season ended and obviously left him here. We were all feeding him, but he preferred the company over at Mon's, where they call him 'Sii-Dam' (Black). Everybody, the guests, everybody, says he's real likeable. All black with a wispy white goatee.
