(The train from Petra to Molyvos)
Last week I wanted to make a cup of tea and reached
for the teapot. The pot was very nearly dropped and broken into thousands of pieces
when I saw what it was hiding when I picked it up: a dark brown snake (well, I
admit, it was rather small, only about 40 cm)! I put the teapot down quickly
and, before the snake could react, I placed one of those mesh food covers on
top of him (or her). I think the snake was as scared as I was: he didn’t move.
The weather is still is playing around. If there are
no showers or no grey or black clouds sailing across the sky, there is a cold
wind blowing from the north or an impressive storm from the south. Real Greek
summer weather has not yet reached the island and in the evenings you have the
choice of either catching a cold outside or moving inside. Even during the day I
am still spending a lot of time inside the house, just like my teapot that has
its place on a sideboard in the kitchen. I suspect that the snake had also had enough
of the cold May weather and was happy to have found a warm teapot to curl
himself around.
But now the snake was trapped under the food-net and I
wondered what to do next. It was no use smashing his head in with a hammer; there
was the net in between the snake and me and, in any case, I didn’t really want
to do that. I wanted to find a way that I could safely transport him out of my
house and set him free. But how to proceed? I decided to use the pizza shovel:
I ran outside quickly, scared that the snake would come-round and escape. I grabbed
the handle with its large round flat metal plate at the end and was back in
no-time. The snake had not moved an inch.
The round surface you use to get pizzas out of the
oven was about the same circumference as the food net. But how do you shovel a
snake out of it? I decided to give it a try — took up an acrobatic pose, trying
to manoeuvre the food-net with one hand and the pizza shovel with the other
(and, of course, keeping as far away from the snake as possible) while shifting
the snake from the net to the shovel.
I should have known that this was a dangerous action:
the snake panicked (I already had), it started to squirm, found an opening
between the net and the shovel and shot away! Well, there I was, with a pizza
shovel in one hand and an empty food-net in the other hand, staring at the
crack between the side board and the wall into which the snake had disappeared.
What to do next? The sideboard was too heavy to move, but I did not intend to rest
the case and let the snake escape. I mean, I couldn’t carry on working, sitting
in front of my computer, drinking tea or cooking or anything, with the thought that
the snake might enjoy having my company at the table. It might curl up cosily behind
my warm computer, or when having my afternoon nap it might think that sleeping
with two is much more fun than sleeping alone.
The only thing I could think of was to close all
existing gaps between the sideboard and the wall. So I gathered up lots of plastic
bags to temporarily stuff the gap, then rushed to the shed where I got slats, a
hammer and nails and furiously nailed the slats over the gaps. It was only when
there were no more holes to be seen that my breathing returned to normal.
Of course I asked the snake for forgiveness because I’d
killed him in such an atrocious way and for days I really felt guilty; nonetheless
I couldn’t bring myself to remove the slats. I silently hoped that he might
have found a way out, for snakes are also creatures of God. According to
friends he was not even a poisonous one, so he would not have hurt a fly. But, having
taken over my teapot without asking permission was asking for trouble.
The Queen knew better. For years now I have celebrated
Queensday with a glass and a fly swat. This day always takes place at the end
of April or in May and starts with the entry of the Queen. It’s an enormous
hornet, the biggest wasp in Europe, who flies buzzing loudly into the house
(well, whether she is flying or not, I’m not sure; I have never discovered how
she enters the house, she is always suddenly there). After circling the house
for some time she gets me so mad that I have to stop whatever I’m doing and
then we start the game: the Queen flies all over the house and I run behind her
with a big glass and the fly swat. As soon as she settles on a flat surface
that I can reach, I trap her under the glass, shift the swat under it and I put
her out of the house. That is round one. A little later the Lady reappears in
the house and the game continues. Last year I won after four rounds when she
gave up. Last week she was here again and I guess she was a bit older because this
time she gave up after two rounds.
This, of course, is bullshit because a wasp does not
live more than a year. So each year it must be a new Queen making her entrance
to the house. I wonder why each year I am honoured with the visit of this
mega-wasp who enters the house not just once but sometimes four times in a
mysterious way.
So even though we are still waiting for the summer,
insects are ever present again to give your life even more problems. Spiders,
ants, caterpillars and mosquitos are again part of daily life. Recently, I
heard somebody say that on Lesvos we have Tiger Mosquitos, a dangerous variant
from that buzzing species that gives irritating bites. Yesterday when I was at
my computer I saw a kind of mosquito passing by, although it seemed a little too
big, so I thought no, maybe not a mosquito. When I took a better look I saw that
his body was lightly striped; I became alarmed: was this an infamous Tiger
Mosquito? The good thing about working on the computer is that you can quickly find
answers for a lot of questions — so I discovered that this was no Tiger Mosquito,
just some sort of dragonfly. And after asking some more people about this
redoubtable mosquito, there seems to be no evidence that a Tiger Mosquito has ever
entered the island.
The only new ‘danger’ here in the north of the island
is the motorized caterpillar, also called The little Train. It
is an amusement park style vehicle that has its habitat now in Molyvos and in
Pètra. First there was only one, but now it has increased to three and its
habitat now extends as far as Anaxos. It transports everybody who wants (and
pays) from Pètra to Molyvos, all the way to the harbour and even up to the
castle. You do not have to be afraid of it because it creeps very slowly
(causing plenty of irritation to fast drivers) along the road. In the evening
it is so brightly illuminated that it looks like a fairground attraction. The
route of this sweet locomotive with its two or three wagons has not yet
extended to Eftalou, so there is no reason for me to be afraid that coming home
one day I might find a derailed train trying to steal my teapot.
(with thanks to Mary Staples)
© Smitaki 2014
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