Komodo Dragons

 

Komodo dragons are like saltwater crocodiles with python heads, but by midday they have assumed the posture of overfed house cats, laying flattened in the shade, one arm pointing to the north of their kingdom and the other pointing to the south of it. They notice you gawking at them, taking their picture, they pose, regal in their own minds, with the confidence of naked fat men posing at a figure drawing class. They lift their head for a moment, slightly, to the side, their better side, just a bit, or maybe they blink, one long undersided-eyelid blink that drags on too long, maybe they just fell asleep a little. They dream of standing over your open carcass, digging with wet slurps, jostling for position, grinning, laughing, eating. Or maybe they don’t dream at all.

 

Komodo crocodile-snakes eat anything with meat, a scrap of chicken tossed in their general direction, a monkey, a water buffalo, Mr. Rudolf Reding von Biberegg. They have been around for a while, everyone knows about them, worldwide fame, but they are few in number, and not widely dispersed. They live on a few scraggly islands that are uncomfortably full of game. Where did all these deer come from? Thousands of people come to see them, walking behind guides in green ranger outfits and forked sticks: no promise, this is not zoo, but we can only guarantee to see komodo here, at the kitchen, in jungle, no promise.

 

Back track, tell a story, use some details, make an idea out of a question, set up the argument, question the motives, leave it all hanging with a wink.

 

We’re in a hotel in Labuan Bajo. It’s the best hotel in town: no one else is there, the private room we rent for $12 is on the third floor, it has a grand bed, two fans and nothing else. I love it. The balcony looks over the harbor, the smell of diesel, and fish sauce and burning plastic pours in the wide never-closing balcony doors. The loudspeakers of the mosques call out bingo in a strange haunting language I can’t understand. There is one big rat that lives on the first floor, somewhere in the long dripping shower room he has a hole he calls home. He only comes upstairs to eat, cleaning up the bits of rice left on the kitchen floor, or maybe sampling whatever the last backpackers left on top of the fridge. We, the rat and I, don’t say much to each other, we exchange passing pleasantries and extend the courtesy of quickly leaving the room just as, or before the other enters.

 

 

We, the girlfriend and I, rent boats from the harbor and go freediving in the park. We swim with the mantas, we molest the turtles, we try to commune with the fish, but they swim away. We rent some motorbikes and go to a waterfall. We’re tourists in a tourist town, where they know you and expect you and are ready for you. Excuse me mister, tomorrow? As if just saying tomorrow is enough to communicate broad meaning and significant enough questioning to ensure a response. But by day 10 I know what is being asked of me. No, thank you, I already have plans tomorrow. We’re tourists, in a tourist land. It’s unavoidable. We pay extra for a private boat, to get away from the tours and groups. It’s good, we pay extra, but it’s good. We feel better having skipped out, left the crowd, done our own thing. But it’s not really outside the trap. You can’t really get outside of it, not in a place that knows you’re coming, where you have been coming for generations, they won’t let you out, they know what you’re thinking, but it’s okay, we play the roll and smile.

 

We hole up in the perfect hotel and enjoy the four walls, the door, a place with a bed and a room. We go out at night to the market and eat squid. Days pass and we think about leaving. Some more days pass and we think we should be leaving. 12 days pass and we decide to go to Lombok. It’s best, cheapest, easiest, perfect, just to take the 4 day trip, the white people boat, the backpacker thing, where they feed you, you sleep on the floor, you see the dragons, Rinca and Komodo. You are seeing the Komodo? Not yet, but we will. You have to, it’s a box, just tick it, your less cynical older self will be glad. So we do: cattle tour, sunscreen convention, pale skin and deep pockets, fucking backpackers.

 

Monday morning we lug our giant backpacks, surfboards, freedive gear, speargun, 60m rope, rock climbing rack, and extra beers down to the cab. It’s an expedition, I explain to myself, we’re not backpackers, we can’t carry all our stuff, it’s like a Victorian adventure, we’re explorers. Oooooh, the cab driver says, you pay extra because of…, and he gestures at the pile of gear and bags. Yeah, we pay extra, sure, take us to the harbor. We leave town on a Monday and arrive at Rinca by 10:30am. We pay the men in the office. They stamp dates on the tickets. I think they sit all day stamping dates on the tickets and taking money. We write our names on a clipboard paper, just name, country, and sex. Where do these papers go? Whose name could we find on them if we searched? Who cares?

There are ill looking deer hanging about the yellow buildings. One is bleeding from its missing antler stub. Its shade o’clock and no one is working. There are shovels and construction implements leaned against piles of building materials. Most of the buildings are in disrepair, some in active repair, the whole scene looks like a Kafkan western with secretive townsfolk, smiling officials, and confused looking foreigners. In the square is a nailed together length of fence. Horned sculls of mammals are hung on it like a warning. Everyone is crouched in the small high-noon shade. The earth is yellow, the light is yellow, and the sculls are yellow. There is a light breeze and some yellow dust picks up into a low swirl that quickly dissipates.

 

 

Our guide collects us and begins to explain things. Somewhere it is said you need to take the long tour, on a website somewhere, so we ask for the long tour before he even gets to explain the options. He says this is not a good idea. That it is better we can take the long walk in Komodo, here long walk is no shade, Komodo is bigger jungle. Someone accuses him of being lazy. Lazy locals. People, westerners, colonialists, the children of colonialists, the grandchildren of colonialists, will say this about any local from a hot place: a lazy Mexican, a lazy Fijian, a lazy Māori. You see they didn’t have to work for food, they will explain, sipping at a Fiji bitter, it was paradise, fruit on the trees, fish in the seas, they just don’t like to work, it’s in their blood. How can this conversation be so common? I heard it everywhere, in buddy talk between middle aged white men in beach resort bars, said in hushed tones as if it were secret wisdom, as if it were not clearly a racist cliché, but instead some blessing of knowledge gained through hard earned experience, and passed on like a gift to a fellow American. One night after a few beers an expat in Tonga leaned in close and explained, you don’t know these people like I do, I’ve lived here 14 years, they’re lazy thieving niggers.

 

Okay, we decide, in the uncomfortable way that groups make decisions, we will go on the medium tracking. It’s midday, maybe this guy knows what he’s talking about, there is no water on this island, the long track doesn’t have any shade. I am not guaranteeing to see Komodos, he explains, except here, here is guaranteed. We can see the massive monitors half asleep in the shade of the kitchen porch. The kitchen komodos. They come for the smelling the foods. You are lucky sometimes no komodo. In mating seasons only one komodos in two months. The people coming back and wanting their monies back. But we can’t guaranteeing the komodo, this in not zoo, only here we are guaranteeing, out in the jungle not guaranteeing. We will see more though, come, we will see two more.

 

 

We walk through the dry scrub, the jungle, on a well worn foot path. The trail leads to a nest mound were a small (2m?) female lies in waiting. She is protecting the baby. She is not moving for 2 months, not eating for 2 month. The mommy is not taking care of the baby but is leaving after 2 month, baby is coming in 7 more month. Komodo is eating the babies, female too is eating the baby, our guide explains. Wikipedia says the juveniles make up 10% of the diet. It also says the young ones have to roll in shit and hide in eviscerated carcasses to avoid getting eaten when they approach a kill. Life is tough for a young monster.

 

As we pass through the forest monkeys play in the trees, or dig in the dry mud for unseen treasures. Komodo is eating monkey too, the guide explains. One time with big groups of japanee we see a monkey be eaten whole. The komodo swallow the food and let it die inside. The monkey is still squeaking inside two days before it dies. No not two days, two hours, two hours it dies. The monkey was mother with baby and not seeing the komodo when it come down from the tree. Komodo is eating both of them, swallow momma and baby. The Japanee is crying, why you not stop this, they is crying. But this is not zoo. This is wild. They complain to office, why is the ranger not stopping this, they ask.

 

Further along the track we see a second nest, lazy mother again. We walk on. You can tell the guide doesn’t really think we will see any more komodos. They are not active daytime, he mentions several times. We do see another komodo, a ‘wild’ one, that is not a female at a mound, or a kitchen komodo. It’s small, the guide is surprised when it stands up and walks away on our approach. The walk takes an hour, it’s mostly in the shade, everyone is quietly glad we didn’t go on the long walk.

 

We eat lunch, snorkel, move the boat over to Komodo. By the time we get there the sun is almost setting. We are doing the short tracking, the new guide explains. We cannot be in the jungle when the sun is setting. We are not guaranteeing the komodo. Only here, not in the jungle. He points over to the kitchen komodo. We walk over and take a few pictures, the guy on the porch throws a hunk of chicken and the heretofore statuesque lizard transports 3m to his left in a blur of feet and short legs and scales, and grabs the chicken from it’s flight before it can hit the dust. This komodo male, this his pet, the guide gestures to the grinning man on the porch. I read later that one of the recorded attacks was on a ranger in his room, a komodo had come in and lay in waiting under his desk and when the ranger came in he bit his legs. The man survived. I look closer at the komodo, who is now focused on the next possible chicken-in-flight moment and has his head cocked like a rooster, one eye lasing the man on the porch. Do lizards know about love, I wonder? Lions love. Carnivorous birds kiss their babies. Some sharks are even good mothers. Komodos eat their young. Komodos don’t make good pets, I conclude.

 

 

We do the short track, there are no komodos, only deer and pigs. We come to a clearing with a muddy bit in the middle. This is the watering hole. There are a dozen large mammals standing around, a few deer that were drinking back off as we approach, but stay on the fringe of the opening, watching us, not about to make a run for shelter, just keeping distance. This is no natural water hole, we are told. There is an obvious hose snaking out of the woods and into the middle, trickling water into the mud. In dry season no water on this side of the island. We make this for the animals, we are helping the animals. Komodo come and feed by the watering hole, he waiting and hiding and come and bite the water buffalo when it goes for water. I picture a poor water buffalo in the dry season, dusty, dry lipped and desperate. What luck is it to be born on the only islands with water buffalo-eating giant lizards, and added to that there is no water, except this one muddy patch in a clearing that the rangers have made to lure you into, so that the tourists can see your carcass eviscerated.

 

It’s a devilish thing this island. The water buffalo were brought there. They are too big to be eaten by the lizards so the lizards just bite them and wait for them to die, of sepsis, of fever and torrential dreams. Then their body feeds up to 15 monsters, they leave only the head, because, like a snake, the komodo swallows its prey whole, or bites it into chunks and swallows bit by bit. But they can’t fit the horns, so they leave the head, and the scull is carrion, left in the open like Antigone’s brother, picked to bone by ants and forest hens, till it is yellow and hard, when it can then be picked up by the rangers and hung like an ornament from a fence post.

 

As we leave the clearing the animals slowly advance again toward the mud hole, like an iris closing, all their heads turned to our departure. There is a strange air of death and terminal inevitability surrounding that watering hole. The island feels like a slaughterhouse, where pigs and deer are raised to die. We all die, but the island feels small, controlled by the appetites of the monsters, and the hunger of the insatiable faceless and uncountable tourists. This is not a zoo, they keep saying, but it feels unnatural, like something sinister is going on behind the curtain, like Jurassic Park is run by Dr. Moreau.

 

We return to the beach area where the building and shops are. We walk along the little tourist area to see a few more komodos that hang around town. One giant one is called Hercules, and has sprawled across the footpath. He’s the big one, they say. Another ranger is crouching close to Hercules and taking his picture with a tourist’s camera. The tourists stand in the background, holding hands, or posing awkwardly still, smiling, waiting for the shutter to go.

 

 

We say goodbye to our guide and head back to the cattle boat. There are a few more groups hanging around, and the venders try to lure us in front of their wares, but we are tired and not very responsive. A pair of wooden komodos battles in a strangely loving embrace on the end of an unattended table. The gate over the dock makes its departing claims in English, thanks for coming, or have a great day, or thank you come again. We walk down the long pier and the nearly full moon is low and yellow over the mountains of Komodo Island to the east.

 

I think about what would happen not if the komodos broke loose their cages, like in the movie, but if they suddenly died out, or if the pollution and overpopulation and politics made their existence impossible. At first the streets of Labuan Bajo would be hung with ratty old posters offering tours of the islands, images of the monster would still adorn the walls of buildings like pictures of long dead relatives. Some people would try and shift the focus of the park, where the dragons once roamed. But eventually the town would clear out, the people would stop coming, the park buildings would be replaced with villages and towns and cities. The beaches would collect the plastic and flotsam of urbanity. The world will forget, busy worrying about the extinction of other popular creatures, or about the growth of new cities, or some fashionable political tumult. Some day people will mention the park in a story like people mention the World’s Fair, or an airship, a relic of the culture of the past, an interesting thing to study not because of the giant lizards, but because of what it says about this particular moment in time, how the people kept the island, like a garden outside, for the lizards to live in.