Predators I Have Known - Alan Dean Foster [62]
Journey in expectation of seeing nothing, and you will invariably be surprised.
Since there were no regular tours to Varirata, I had hired a car and driver. Edward was not a guide, though he was willing to accompany me into the forest—for an additional fee, of course. The trails in Varirata being well marked and reasonably well maintained, I decided instead to head off for a couple of hours on my own. Many of my most memorable rain-forest encounters have taken place when I was by myself. The less noise you make, the less disturbance you create, the less presence you bring, the better your chances of seeing something out of the ordinary. Conversation with fellow humans I can get anytime.
Trekking Varirata involved some up-and-down hiking, but I came across no slopes that proved particularly strenuous. While it was indeed cooler than down on the coast in Port Morseby, I was still in the tropics and soon found myself drenched in familiar perspiration. I was wearing what at that time I thought was appropriate attire: short-sleeved shirt, shorts, and sandals. Having liberally dosed myself with insect repellant, I considered myself reasonably well defended from mosquitoes. Varirata was not the Amazon. While present, the park’s mossies (as the Australians call them) were nothing like the anemia-inducing hordes I had encountered elsewhere.
Though the forest was relatively open, I stayed on the trail. Since within a mature rain forest, everything looks exactly the same in every direction, you can walk twenty feet off a trail and quickly find yourself hopelessly lost. Small streambeds present another danger, since when dry they often resemble trails and can easily lead the unwary astray.
I was entirely alone. Varirata is not Yellowstone (though it was that American park that directly inspired Varirata’s creation). Spectacular, enormous birdwing butterflies soared overhead, as if someone was periodically shaking Christmas tree ornaments out of the rain-forest canopy. As I walked, I kept a wary eye out for snakes. In some countries, poisonous serpents have been bequeathed innocuous names, like the deadly but blandly named Australian brown snake. In New Guinea, you have the death adder. There’s a reptile whose name would not lead to unnecessary queries as to its lethal potential.
You want to walk quietly in the rain forest, but with a heavy step. Exceptionally sensitive to vibration, a snake detecting your approach is eager to slither off into the brush and out of your path. It’s the terrestrial equivalent of shuffling your feet in shallow water to alert any dozing stingrays.
Weird cries from unseen sources intrigued but did not unsettle me. One was especially loud and sharp. It struck me that this was because the sound was now coming from almost directly overhead. Tilting back my head, I searched the trees, squinting at the occasional burst of sunlight that thrust down between the branches. Something was moving among the leaves. It was sizable, mostly golden-brown in color, with a tail that more than anything else resembled a Persian potentate’s fly whisk.
Raggiana bird of paradise.
I had never seen a bird of paradise in the wild, though I had hoped to do so. Here, not far over my head, was the national bird of Papua New Guinea, indifferent to my gawking presence and busily squawking its head off. I struggled with my camera. The Raggiana is not an especially rare bird of paradise, but for someone whose most common avian acquaintances are canyon towhees and blue jays, it was as alien as a pterodactyl.
What I did not realize, in my excitement and enchantment, was that I was standing still as I was recording video. And while I was standing still, certain denizens of the