This episode happened 24 years ago and if I’ve told it to you before, you may want to skip the entire story.
And how do I know it was exactly 24 years ago? Well, because it was in January that year, which was almost the Year of the Snake. So, that would be the year 2001.
This was way before I started AnimalCare and we didn’t even have cats at that time. We were still living in our old house in our old neighbourhood. We only had Mac and Bobby, our two pet dogs. Husband was still in the RMAF and the children were still in primary school.
I was really gungho at that time, waking up at 4.00am every morning to go for a walk with Bobby. Those were safer times, or was it?
So, I had woken up and my usual routine would be to take Bobby’s leash and we would go for a walk around the neighbourhood. So I opened the front door with Bobby beside me, and what did I see?
There was something long lying across the space between the door and the floor. My feet were just four inches away from it.
My first instinct was to grab Bobby and that was what I did. I grabbed him, closed the door as softly but quickly as I could, and sat down holding Bobby tightly, to calm my nerves.
“It’s just a very big worm,” I told myself, repeatedly. “It’s just a very, very big worm, a gigantic earthworm.”
Of course it wasn’t. We weren’t living in the jungles of the Amazon and there are no worms THAT big.
I don’t know how long I sat there with Bobby but after I came to terms with what that “big worm” was, I called my friend, Betts. Thank goodness Betts lived nearby.
Husband was flying so there would have been no way to call him. The children were still sleeping upstairs so there was no point in alerting them.
Did I even have a handphone then? I doubt it. It was the landline.
I told Betts there was a reptile lying right there, at my front door.
Betts was as cool as a cucumber and said, “Oh, no worries, I’ve seen my father catch them all the time. You have a plastic container? I’ll come over and catch it for you.”
So, Betts drove over and sauntered into our porch most confidently. I don’t think I could even move my legs since I was still traumatised, but I managed to get to the kitchen to find an old icecream container (it was maroon in colour, I still remember) and somehow, walked to the front windows, plucked up enough courage to open the windows (oh yes, I had already closed all the windows by then, I don’t know how I did that, but I did) and passed the icecream container to Betts.
So, Betts confidently started looking for it in our porch. I don’t know what time it was by then, but it was getting brighter.
Betts found it, and said, “There it is!!” and tried to cover it with the plastic container but it slithered away (of course it would, right?) and Betts said it was under a flower pot.
Oh my…
So, the commotion went on outside and I absolutely had zero courage and didn’t dare to go out to “help” Betts. I knew I would have been no help at all and Betts understood that. I was in a deep, deep trauma.
Finally, Betts’ attempts all failed and it was already light by then. I had to get the children up to go to school.
School has to go on, they could not skip a day of school. Betts went home too to get her own children to school.
This part is totally vague now, but I somehow (I don’t remember how now) but I got the children up to go to school. I thought they would be safer in school, away from our porch. So, both children were in school and I really cannot remember now, how I managed to find the courage to do that because it would have required us all to leave the house and get into the car to get to school. I think Betts also checked our porch thoroughly and told me “it” wasn’t in the porch anymore. Perhaps that gave me some courage.
Some time soon, husband came back from work (thank goodness) and he learnt about the whole thing. Immediately, he went to seek his friend/colleague/superior’s help just down our road. That would be Uncle Loke (actually Colonel Loke at that time, and later, retired as General Loke, highly decorated RMAF officer).
Now, Uncle Loke was an expert in snakes. His hobby was to go to the jungles and I don’t know what he did there, but he liked going into jungles. He was even known to catch small cobras and put them in his pocket to frighten young RMAF officers or beat them into shape. Apparently, he’d been bitten so many times by various reptiles, he’d declared himself “immune” from their bites. Was this a joke, I don’t know.
Uncle Loke was, again, as cool as a cucumber, and said he would gladly help to catch the reptile. But first, I had to identify which type of reptile it was. So, he brought his encyclopedia with large pictures of perhaps all the snakes in this region and I was to identify it, so that he knew how to set up the correct trap to catch it (and release it back to the jungle).
Oh my….I had to look at pictures of snakes, are you out of your mind????
Backstory: I grew up in government quarters throughout my childhood. We lived in various semi-urban areas and our houses had had many visits from various types of snakes. My father was quite the self-taught expert in catching them. I’ve seen the reptiles, I know they can effortlessly slide through two pieces of glass too and are very, very adept at hiding. Back in Kampar, we lived in a very big (actually, long) government quarters and we were forbidden from entering two “storerooms” at the end of the house because large snake skins were found in them. I remember our gardener would periodically sprinkle sulphur all around the house too. I don’t know whether it was my childhood or did something very traumatic happen, but despite so much exposure to them, instead of becoming braver, I developed a ridiculous (but real) phobia of them until my mum had to create a new word for them so that the word itself would not send me into a fit.
So, yes, looking at pictures (I could not even handle cartoon pictures and Disney’s Jungle Book was a huge problem, school science books were also a problem, as was the newspapers too), what more, real-life PHOTOS in Uncle Loke’s encyclopedia? No, No, I would die. I would, literally, die.
Can I just die instead, please?
But Uncle Loke wasn’t too interested in my phobia; he was gleefully waiting for me to identify the reptile so that he could get to work to build his trap. So, I had to stand at end of the house, while husband held the book at the other end and flipped the pages. But that task proved to be a complete failure as I could not even last two pages. I was already crying.
Uncle Loke finally asked me to remember as much as I could based on what I had seen in that split second when I opened the door and he asked me specific questions. He probably also knew what species might be living in our neighbourhood since he was, after all, the expert.
Yes, it had a triangular head. I was very, very super sure of that. I remember its length (not very long) but the middle portion was bigger than the rest.
So, Uncle Loke concluded that it was viper (he flipped to the page in his encyclopedia and yes, that was it) and it had probably just eaten a lizard in our porch and was resting after makan. The space between the door and floor was perfect as a “siesta” space. Uncle Loke also said that if that “big worm” had bitten me, I would only have had 20 minutes to rush to the hospital to get the antidote.
I was already traumatised to the hilt by then, so there was no way to get even more traumatised than that anymore.
The rest of the next few hours was a bit of a blur for me. But Uncle Loke went back to build his trap and he came back with it and set it up. I cannot remember what was in the trap, but I think it was an egg or something (I think he did mention that a live bait would have been more effective, but I absolutely forbade that, so I think he used an egg).
Meanwhile, I had called my colleague at work to tell them about this most unfortunate incident. Mr Chin was a former headmaster in Sekinchan and apparently, that place is crawling with them since the area was a paddy field kampung. Mr Chin told me sulphur does NOT work (yes, it absolutely does not), but Chlorox did. So, husband went to buy bottles of Chlorox and poured them in our porch and inside the drains. We had many flower pots in our garden and of course those were perfect hiding places as attested by Mr Chin (“They can slide under flower pots”, he said).
Husband had actually already bought sulphur earlier, so our entire porch was covered in it, anyway.
Uncle Loke said it probably would not come in the daytime. Just wait until nightfall. It had identified our porch as a “food” source, so it might come back.
Oh boy…
I don’t remember how I lived through the hours but I did.
All the windows remained tightly closed.
The next morning, believe it or not, we found slither marks all over the sulphur (at least it served some purpose) at the window, as though it was trying to come inside our house.
What’s with this reptile and why was it trying to come into our house???
Friends joked that it was a “good omen” (yeah, right) since it was near Chinese New Year and it was going to be the Year of the Snake, so I should go out and buy four-digit lottery.
Good omen or whatnot, I just wanted it gone, please.
So, Uncle Loke’s trap did not work. I think he modified his trap the next day too (he was so happy with the challenge), and by then, Uncle Loke had scoured the area and noticed that two doors away, a neighbour had recently uprooted a tree, so he suspected that that was its nest. That must have been its home. Poor guy, really. I don’t know if it was male or female, though, but I did feel sorry for it.
We waited until nightfall again. Husband had sprinkled more sulphur since we could use that to check for slither marks.
The next morning, there were slither marks all over the sulphur again. I don’t know why people still use sulphur to this day, though. It just doesn’t work.
Gosh…this is one persistent reptile, isn’t it?
Uncle Loke’s trap still failed or rather, the reptile was smarter than what Uncle Loke had expected. Nor surpring, said Uncle Loke. I had forbade the use of a live bait, so that would have already reduced the effectiveness of his trap.
So, that was my three-day ordeal way back in January 2001. On the fourth morning, there were no more marks. Uncle Loke said it probably would not come back anymore and he was right. It took me months before my fear of going out to the porch dissipated. We got rid of all our flower pots, every single one of them and constantly poured Chlorox into the drains.
Now, it’s January again and come this Chinese New Year, it would be that 12-year cycle repeating again; it’s a time I would fear. And more so, when some time last year, we had a visit by a slithery one, right here, outside our front door and who was the one who noticed it?
Me, again. I think you’d remember this episode as it only happened around May or June last year.
Well, live and let live, I say. They have every right to live peacefully on this Earth and since we humans continuously destroy the animals’ natural habitat, what do we expect, right? Surely, it would drive them out to look for new homes and it is in their nature (as it is in every living being’s) to defend themselves.
Happy Chinese New Year (soon) and be safe. I’m already traumatised now, just writing this story, but I will probably be okay in a few hours’ time.
Bobby and me
All of us with Mac and Bobby
A note about phobias: Phobias are very real. But it is also very difficult to get sympathy from the general public, especially from people who do not have a single phobia. It is worse when they dismiss your phobia and use a fear tactic to try to “heal you”. It’s the same with mental illness too. People who have never experienced clinical depression will never understand, much less sympathise with someone who is afflicted with it. They would often ask you to “snap out of it” because they think it can be done. They say the stupidest things like, “Think happy thoughts and you will be happy”. If only that could be done, psychiatrists will be out of a job! It is an illness, just like cancer or kidney failure.
One is also reminded of a certain medical doctor/minister who advised people to “minum air suam” to cure Covid-19, failing to acknowledge the fact that Covid-19 is a viral disease. It’s the same with clinical depression or the many mental health illnesses; these are diseases, not self-inflicted mental conditions.
Who on earth wants to be miserable? Who wants to be suicidal?
By the same token, who on earth wants to live with a phobia?
Empathy is something that humans lack. Cats and dogs have it. Many humans don’t.
Throw in intelligence too, and that about sums up the human species, doesn’t it?
Minum air suam, indeed!