March 1, 2025
We’ve had a few very interesting animal encounters here in Indonesia – this one just a few days ago.
We’d motored our dinghy about half way to the pier when something skittered over my leg. I looked down to see what my mind believed at the time to be a 12 foot crock. I screamed, which is kind of rare for me. It was a short scream, cut off by the realization that it was just a large, little lizard.
Cyndi then picked up the slack when she was startled by my scream and then saw the “crock” in our dinghy. Her scream was the best horror movie scream I’ve ever heard and went on for at least 20 seconds. Her scream was followed by at least a minute of my hysterical laughing (yep, I’m not a nice person!).
The lizard didn’t want anything to do with the noisy creatures in this boat but he couldn’t get up the slick sides of the dinghy to escape. He hid the best he could and we pretended he wasn’t there the best we could.
When we got to the dock, we were able to use an oar to persuade him to leave.
Our other animal encounter was finding a 12 foot python in our galley at 2 AM. Here’s a post about that.
-Rich
Note from Cyndi: I love critters like lizards plus non-deadly insects/snakes. But this one startled me. By the time I finished my scream, I realized it wasn’t a sea snake (my biggest fear) but a monitor lizard. I felt terrible for screaming and apologized profusely for scaring our little friend. He/she (they?) actually poked its head out and looked us both, one at a time, in the eye, as though assessing our intentions. Poor thing was feeing vulnerable, though, and tried to hide the rest of the way to the dock.
We went to make our beer purchase, hoping it would vacate the dinghy, but it was still there when we returned. Rich got it onto an oar paddle and simple transferred it to the water. No worries, it was a water monitor that’s a good swimmer. It was nice to see the oar used for a peaceful purpose, and not as an argument instigator for us Boomers (to this day, they remain “the yelling sticks.”) Here’s our original post about them.
