At least that’s my theory as to why we didn’t see one our last night in Malaysia. Bob, Jim, and I took a night hike with a local guide and stumbled across a couple fornicating in the jungle.
He was stickin it to her.
“Sorry, where is it?” I asked.
“There,” answered the guide, apparently pointing again in the correct direction.
“Where?”
The guide turned on his lamp and I found myself facing the wrong direction. He guided my eyes to the correct spot then turned off the light, where I found a tiny green mushroom, and other inhabitants.
Spiders crept along trunks and hid under leaf litter, searching for a tasty snack.
(there's more than one spider in this photo)
We hiked for about an hour, haphazardly blinding poor creatures that stumbled upon our path.
A small hole gaped from the side of a little hill, so our guide picked up a stick and poked it. Since childhood, my curiosity of what creatures might hide down a hole, under a crevice, or beneath a rock has led me to get bitten, clawed, stabbed, and chased - so I admired our guide’s approach. A few jabs in the dirt pile and an angry scorpion scuttled out. Our guide however, wasn’t satisfied. “This is just the male. There will be a larger female inside as well.”
But regardless of how much he tried to irritate her, she couldn’t be coaxed out. I was okay with this, picturing the scorpion rustling around her room to find a miniature pistol.
We left the ticked off male and climbed up a hide where we spotted a sambar deer grazing in a clearing. Unfortunately the tapirs, rhinos and tigers stayed well away from our headlamps, but we saw enough fanged and clawed creatures to make it a successful night hike.
