I asked Paranto if I could go with him to the jungle.
I wanted to learn the jungle wisdom, how it was possible to survive and behave in a primitive condition.
PARANTO’S JUNGLE TRAPS BY VARTAN KOUMROUYAN 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 141
I didn’t think there would be squirrels in the jungle. I always thought squirrels lived in cities, like cats, dogs, and rats. Sheryl said in the jungle there were skunks and armadillos, snakes, eagles, bearcats, and yes, squirrels.
I planted a thousand pineapple, or piña as Sheryl liked to call them, their Spanish name, and I noticed that the squirrels liked them, and they were many, as if they all bunched to razzia the plantation.
I suggested to Sheryl we pick the pineapples not quite so ripe, but she always refused, saying the pineapples needed more time. Of course the squirrels got to them first. So I decided I had to trap the squirrels.
The wildlife in the jungle on the island of Palawan, Philippines, was not just squirrels. I could hear guttural sounds that I imagined were from a big owl perched on the tall Apitong tree. There were many varieties of ants, red, the most lethal, black, small, medium and large, and another species that filed in long spartan formation from one side of the house to the other on the wash line or the transom of doors, thousands of them on their commuting route that made me think I’m in their way and I have to adapt.
In the mush of a rotten and decomposing tree trunk I found black scorpions, like a brooch in the soft yellow nesting cocoon with a fluorescent rainbow on their carapace like oil leak on water. At first they seemed surprised for the inconvenience when I poked a stick at them.
Many tarantulas hid in the planks of timber Uncle Ontoy cut with his chainsaw near the well, that I brought to store in the sala, the storage room at the back where we had a bed and a wardrobe. One day Sheryl found a constrictor snake, three feet long, baby size. There was a family of geckos who had chosen the rafters to settle, perhaps because it was easy for them to prey on insects and equally easy to hide from the wild birds under the roof.
So I set a trap for the squirrels. I used a slice of pineapple rind to lure them into a cage. For camouflage I cut a bunch of leaves from the Marang tree, grass, dry twigs, tufts of crabgrass, and placed the trap where the sun plays on the shade. I set another trap near an avocado tree because there were many squirrels, and I thought with another trap they might get the idea and change their plans.
It’s their territory and I’m their guest in the jungle, I grant that, but they were ruining the pineapples one after the other without eating them completely, spoiled brats.
In the same way I might trick the chipmunks, skunks, hay rats, or jungle mice, coming up from the rice fields to fill the gaps when the lowlands are ploughed and there’s nothing to eat. They seem to understand what razzia means by instinct, all of them, the ants, the owls, even the eagles, when they hover and eye the chicken or the puppies and think of the possibilities to swoop and pick one.
It seems that’s the only purpose of life and everyone was to defend a territory. Wake up, wash, brush, comb, pee, scroll, swipe the screen when there’s connection in the middle of the jungle, buy the traps from the hardware store in Taytay, nail more barbed wire on the perimeter, wash again near the water tank in the patio because the Pacific atmosphere feels heavy in the air and the indigo-cyan clouds look like a painting in fusion when the sun sets tufts of peachy, crimson, cherry red flock of sheep on the mercury sky, plunging its last rays behind the mountain range, and its suddenly dark.
Walking to Quintilla’s grocery store in the barrio on the path with the chirping of some colourful birds, Paranto passed me on his Rusi 125cc motorbike and beeped in recognition. The beep is in lieu of a salute. He won’t release his grip on the handles because the path is rough.
The shady section in the lee of the trees on the path is like the non-gravity feeling of the amniotic fluid the body remembers when suddenly a wave of freshness sweeps from undergrowth and I inhale all the aromas in one breath, the harvest moon a silver coin on top of the trees, the dry hay, the rice chaff, the drying mud, the wet grass, the dew glints, the warbling birds, and body and mind are exhilarated, until the path winds under the piercing sun on the opposite slope and the weight of terra firma tugs on the feet.
I asked Paranto if I could go with him to the jungle, because he always brought us meat when he came back from his expeditions, wild boar rib bones, chunks of meat I cooked in the caldero with beans, green chili, tomato sauce, on the campfire under the awnings, breathing the amber smoke of the dying timber dust, those I picked up from under the Apitong tree where the land suddenly fell into the precipice. Thick, heavy branches that had fallen in storms and were worthy for cooking “because they last longer” Sheryl explained one day. I didn’t know the difference between the timbers and their use, those that flared up and consumed quickly from those that burned steadily for longer periods to make the stew simmer longer with just one log.