Close Encounters of the Python Kind (Gunung Palung, 2009)

From an email sent January 12, 2009 titled “Close Encounters of the Python Kind”:

a reticulated python

I had a fairly eventful boat trip back to Ketapang from the forest. Most of this boat trip is sort of like the 2km we went through from the Kapuas River to my site, where sometimes it was necessary to get out of the boat and haul it over fallen trees or shallow water, but it takes 8 hours or so on a good day... 

About three hours into the trip what I thought was a huge branch fell on my head, very painful. But then it slithered down my legs, I realized it was a not too long but very fat reticulated python, everyone in the boat except for me, Wahyu, and the python threw themselves overboard. Josie, the Kiwi and only other foreigner in the forest (well, not at the moment, she is currently being treated for a serious infection and is on IV antibiotics...), dove over me and our National Park counterpart Roni threw himself over the front. Roni is a big guy, so when he went over the boat nearly flipped over on my side, since my side had me and the python...

with Wahyu & Josie on the trip when a python fell on my head

I was still fairly stunned by having been hit in the head by a python  and was holding my laptop (in a dry bag, but those things always leak), so just sat there, unsure what to do. Luckily Wahyu has Cheryl-like reflexes (when she was here in October a pit viper fell onto the front of the boat and she managed to fling it away before it entered the boat) and when he realized that it was a python and not a viper (so not venomous, though they give a nasty bite and have been known to squeeze people to death in Borneo), he grabbed it in the middle and threw it overboard, causing the people overboard to jump quickly back in. It was quite amazing.

on the LONG (all day/evening) boat trip back to the forest and to camp