We have company.
It had to be a monkey, it had to be. Though we would have guessed that they would be lighter on their feet. They are curious creatures but not ones to be coming this close. We had no food for them to be attracted to, we were surely not going to be their next meal, so what was it? Steve turned quickly and grabbed a burning stick from the fire. He stood up and began waving it around very quickly as if he had seen something. He poked toward the darkness and the rumble started up again. We had company but didn’t have a clue as to what it could be.
We shined the flashlight in the direction of what we thought to have been the source of the noise but we were unsure. When Steve looked down there was a giant snake on the ground. We both scrambled back and realized it could have possibly been the thud we had heard earlier. It had to be! We grabbed large sticks and poked at the thing until it slithered away ever so slowly.
Steve and I were covered in sweat. The instant panic set in and we didn’t realize until after, how our heart was racing and how weak we both got in the knees. We never got a good look at it, honestly, I was good with that. It was enough for us to gather everything that could burn and put it on the fire. Leaves, grass foliage, and all. We needed smoke and fire to scare away predators.
The forest got super quiet, it was now scary. We sat in fear and no longer took much notice of the blood-sucking mosquitoes, nor the leeches that had climbed onto us. As Steve turned to me holding a torch, I noticed his legs and mine were covered in leeches.
Neither of us noticed but we were covered in them! In our fear and the darkness we didn’t realize we have become a buffet for these little suckers. This was not our first day in the jungle but we had forgotten about these little suckers.
As we did spray ourselves in repellent it must not have been enough or it had worn off with our sweat. There was no other way of removing them than squeezing them gently or flicking them off. We sprayed ourselves once more and removed all the ones we could see. Hoping we got them all, we knew we were not getting sleep tonight. Once we settled a little we sat back by the fire and caught our breath. As soon as I thought I had relaxed and caught my breath, I saw a dim glowing light in the distance.
