Predators I Have Known (9 page)

Quite unexpectedly, we came to a clearing in the forest.

It was immediately apparent that this was no inadvertent open space. A single tree stood in the middle of a parklike circle some twenty feet in diameter. The tree itself was not particularly impressive. The clearing that surrounded it was. The site looked as if it had just been mowed by some especially devoted golf course groundskeeper tending to a particularly loved piece of turf. Despite being surrounded on all sides by a rich, loamy, decaying mat of sodden and nourishing rain-forest detritus, not so much as a single green shoot poked its hopeful head skyward from the cleared area.

“
Palo santo
.” Boris pointed at the tree that was thriving in the center of the inexplicable circle. “The ants that live in the tree keep the area around it perfectly clear. Within the boundaries, nothing is allowed to live that might take nutrients or water from the tree or otherwise harm it. If something starts to grow, they cut it down. If it moves, they kill it or drive it away. In return, the tree gives the ants a home.”

I had long read of such symbiotic ant-tree relationships. The fire ants that dwelled within the tangarana tree are called by the same name as their home: tangarana ants. They were not as widely known and did not have the same widespread malevolent cache as army ants or the dreaded isula ants, but they were feared nonetheless.

“Come, I’ll show you.” Boris started toward the solitary bole. Mark and I exchanged a glance and followed.

Up close, we studied the foot-thick tree trunk. There wasn’t an ant in sight. Unsheathing his machete, Boris reversed it and using the solid haft began tapping lightly on the wood. Within seconds, the trunk was swarming with hundreds of ants. Observing them, I relaxed a little. Despite the frenetic activity they displayed as they searched for the source of the disturbance, they were no more than a quarter inch in length. I had already seen and photographed at close range much larger and far more threatening army ant soldiers. Taking out my video camera, I began recording the activity.

Having stepped back and resheathed his machete, Boris was watching me closely.

“Be careful. Don’t let them get on you.”

“I’m all right.” Seen through the camera’s viewfinder, the ants appeared oddly detached from reality, as if I was already viewing them in finished, edited form. I moved the camera lens closer, confident that I could get good pictures without making physical contact. After all, wasn’t I already experienced at this? Why . . . I had already spent nearly a whole week in the Amazon rain forest.

An incredible searing pain shot through my left hand.

It seems that the enraged tangarana ants not only rush out to defend the trunk of their tree home—swarming into the branches, they fan out into the leaves to drop down onto any intruders below. I had been savagely attacked by a quarter-inch-long parachutist armed with a built-in hypodermic and a toxin that burned like fire.

Jumping back from the tree, I managed to hang on to the camera with my right hand while furiously shaking my left as I launched into an unscripted, unchoreographed, and exceedingly vigorous jig. Back home in the States, such a reaction might well have prompted laughter from any bystanders, or even gained me a few seconds on
America’s Funniest Home Videos
.

Boris wasn’t laughing. He had also, I noticed through the excruciating discomfort, retreated well back from the tree, taking my wide-eyed companion with him.

Realizing that no one from the New York Ballet was around to grade my potential and wholly involuntary audition, I stopped jumping about like a madman. Clenching my teeth, I searched for the source of the fiery pain. In the center of the back of my left hand, one of those tiny ants was busily screwing itself abdomen- and stinger-first into my flesh, rotating its entire body like a tiny organic drill. It took several forceful shoves with the edge of my other hand to finally dislodge the ant. While the miniscule arthropod that had inflicted the pain had been dealt with, the fire remained. It did not go away, in fact, for a couple of days. Not until the inflamed red spot the size of a dime that marked the injection site finally faded from sight.

Coming over, Boris eyed the angry-looking redness appraisingly.

“I have some salve if you want to put something on it.”

“No, I’ll be all right,” I told him. What I didn’t say was,
I’ll tolerate it for as long as it lasts in order to remind me of my arrogance
.

It is said that when the local natives want to severely punish someone, they tie them naked to a tangarana tree. I feel safe in presuming that if the miscreant so condemned doesn’t die, they are suitably chastised for the rest of their life. I know from experience what one sting can do.

I prefer not to imagine what a hundred or so would feel like.

* * *

Northeastern Gabon, January 2007

IN THE MOUNTAINOUS NORTHEASTERN CORNER
of the central African nation of Gabon, in a region noticed, if at all, by the rest of the world for its occasional headline-making outbreaks of the deadly Ebola virus, lies an Eden-like clearing in the jungle called Langoué Bai. Made famous by
National Geographic
explorer J. Michael Fay in the course of his trail-blazing mega-transect of central Africa, Langoué Bai is home to forest elephants, sitatungas, lowland gorillas, and other fabulous beasts. My sister, Carol, had always wanted to see gorillas, while I dreamed of seeing elephants on a beach. Gabon is the only place in the world where the latter encounter is reasonably possible. Having successfully encountered the surreal sand-loving pachyderms on the coast in Loango National Park, we were now on our way inland to Langoué.

The
bai
(the Bayaka word for an opening in the forest) lay in rugged and undeveloped Ivindo National Park. To get to Ivindo, we took the train from the town of Libreville. Winding its way through the heart of Africa, the Trans-Gabon train is a little-known miracle of engineering. Its front cars also boast air-conditioning so powerful that it threatens to turn the upper-class passengers into Gabonsicles. In the days to come, we would have occasion to recall that over-cranked air-con longingly.

The town of Ivindo would not exist except to serve the logging industry. An undisciplined scattering of homes, small bars, and shops fan out from the train station side of the railroad tracks. Met by operatives from the Wildlife Conservation Society that operates the scientific station inside Ivindo and that occasionally welcomes tourists, we and a young couple from San Francisco on their honeymoon (!) tossed our backpacks into the rear of a big, dirt-caked 4x4 and embarked on the nearly five-hour drive to the trailhead.

You know when you’ve reached the end of the line because the road grows progressively worse and the vegetation ever denser around it until the track simply slams up against a steep jungle-covered slope and stops. In the rainy season, the dirt road is virtually impassable. Climbing gratefully out of the vehicle after the long, jouncing ride, we immediately found ourselves in the company of swarms of bees. After a minute or two of near-panic engendered by thoughts of Africanized bees, it became apparent that we were in no real danger. These weren’t Africanized bees: They were just African bees.

All right, so maybe I’m splitting antennae here, but it was clear the hundreds of happy honey hunters buzzing all around us were not interested in us—only in any open food, drink, or other exotic foodstuffs that we might have imported into their neighborhood. They landed on us, got tangled in our hair, and explored our clothes, all without anyone suffering so much as a single sting.

While my sister and I did our best to ignore the clouds of peripatetic pollen pickers, the rest of our party loaded supplies onto their backs preparatory to setting off. There are no roads to the Ivindo scientific station, no airstrip, not even room enough to land a helicopter. Food, medicine, scientific equipment, computers, furniture—everything goes in or comes out on the back of a porter. As the column formed up, I felt as if I was stepping back in time to the Africa of a hundred years ago, when every expedition’s equipment was transported overland on the backs of hired porters. In contrast to my imaginings, the digital watches and occasional rock T-shirt the men wore placed them firmly in the present day.

It is a seven-hour walk (for a healthy human being in acceptable physical condition) from the trailhead to the research station. Much of this is uphill, with the worst part being the first few miles. Steep, muddy, and hacked out of raw hillside jungle, it’s a tough enough march in good weather. In rain, it inculcates twisted ankles and broken bones. Thankfully, the only moisture we had to contend with was preserved in the mud, in small puddles of standing water, and in the perspiration that was already streaming down our bodies.

Our relief was unrestrained when we were told we had reached the top of the “hill” and that while more upslope remained, it would be nothing like what we had just conquered. Thus refreshed in spirit if not in body, we resumed the trek.

“Stop.”

Like the porters, our lead guide was a member of a local tribe. I moved up to stand alongside him and follow his gaze into the jungle ahead. The rain forest here was comparatively open. Large trees atop the plateau were more widely spaced than what we had encountered at the bottom of the canyon. This allowed more sunlight to reach the forest floor, resulting in a greater profusion of bushes and other lesser growths. My gaze fell somewhat, and my attention was drawn to what I first took to be a trick of the sunlight.

The forest floor appeared to be in motion.

“Driver ants.” The guide flashed a learned smile. “Do you know what to do?”

I knew army ants and tangarana ants and their cousins from South and Central America, but this was the first time I had been confronted with their Old World counterparts. Furthermore, this immense colony was not marching, but foraging. That meant that instead of moving in a single, rigid, predictable column, easy enough to avoid or simply jump over, they had spread out over a wide area. Its limits were defined, but extensive. The underbrush was too thick and the ground still too steep and uneven to allow us to go around the colony. Besides, in hunting mode, the ants would be on every trunk, branch, and leaf. Pushing through the brush meant one would inevitably get them on hands, torso—maybe even one’s face.

The glistening red bodies completely covered the trail ahead of us and extended far into the forest on both sides. I admitted to our guide that no, I did not know what to do, and if he had any suggestions for how best to avoid the nightmare swarm directly in front of us, I would gladly take them.

“Avoid?” His expression turned querulous. “Too difficult, take too long. This is what you do.”

Turning from me, he rushed forward and sprinted straight down the ant-carpeted section of trail. The distance from one side of the foraging colony to the other was at least ten yards. Halting on the far side, once again on an ant-free section of the track, he paused to slap and pick at himself.

My sister had come up alongside me. Carol had shown her mettle and determination ever since our transfer flight from Douala, Cameroon, to Port-Gentil, Gabon, on an otherwise empty Dornier through a raging tropical thunderstorm. She was game for anything. But she was from Orange County, California, and dashing through a million or so ferociously feeding driver ants was not an option that had appeared in any of the tourist brochures I had forwarded to her prior to our departure. She eyed the swarm dubiously.

“We’re supposed to
run
through that?”

I looked at her. “Unless you want to walk.”

She responded to my sarcasm with an expression that was wholly devoid of amusement.

Bending over, I tucked the hem of each leg of my pants into my boots. The day before leaving home I had treated boots, socks, and clothing with permethrin, a flower-derived natural insecticide that works fairly well at repelling ticks, chiggers, and other hungry small critters that like to crawl up one’s legs. Among those insects it was supposed to dissuade, I did not recall seeing on the can any specific mention of African driver ants, but at the time I was not in a position to query the manufacturer as to its product’s efficacy in deterring that particular insect.

In any event, I was about to find out.

Making sure my pack was securely on my back, I took a deep breath and ran, trying to make as little contact with the ground as possible.
Long strides
, I told myself.
On tiptoes. And whatever you do . . .

Don’t fall down
.

I made it across without suffering a single sting or bite. My satisfaction vanished a moment later when the ants that had climbed aboard while studiously ignoring the permethrin managed to somehow get inside my pant legs and set to work. It wasn’t too bad. Nothing like the tangarana-ant sting I had suffered in Peru.
Of course
, I told myself,
magnified a few thousand times over, the burning discomfort I was enduring would probably be somewhat less tolerable
. My sister, I am happy to report, did wonderfully well.

We encountered three or four more such swarms before reaching the station. They were still there on the trail days later to greet us on the long walk back down. Each time I ran, I tried to maneuver differently. Each time, no matter what I did, I still suffered a few stings and bites.

No matter how hard you try, you cannot avoid the ground when it is alive.

* * *

Southeastern Peru, July 1998

MORE THAN A DECADE PASSED
before I was able to return to Manú. In the interim, I had visited dozens of countries including Gabon, but my memories of southeastern Peru were strong and I had always determined to go back. Eleven years sees many changes on our crowded planet, even in a place as remote as the Madre de Dios region. The nearest real town, Puerto Maldonado, had grown from a collection of tin-roofed shacks linked together by a network of dirt tracks into a thriving regional hub. Boca Manú, which I remembered as little more than a couple of huts poised tenuously at the confluence of the Alto Madre de Dios and the Manú Rivers, had become an actual small town. There was a new establishment just outside the park boundary and Boris’s dream lodge had long since been opened for business. Though still thankfully infrequent, tourist canoes now plied the Manú River itself on predetermined schedules.