Lessons In Herpetology

Six members of the Dawn Crew were sitting peacefully and companionably on their boards, bobbing up and down gently with the rise and fall of the small swell that was managing to stumble into The Bay. The year had given up all pretence of being emotionally attached to summertime and warm weather, and had embraced wintertime with a passion. While the water was still nice and warm, really, the prevailing sou’westerly of the cold and dry season of the region was making short shrift of any illusions of lingering warmth, and full length wetsuits had finally been adopted by all except the most dangerously insane.

A trade-off of losing the warmth of the sun was also, simultaneously, losing much of the maddening holiday-making crowd and the never-ending hustle and bustle of too many people trying to get on too few waves at the same time. With wintertime and the cold weather had come peace and quiet, and the Crew Members were relishing it. The sun stuck its nose over the edge of the horizon placidly and unhurriedly, painted the sky hard red and orange, and slowly chased the black ragged remnants of the cold dark night away, one at a time. The Crew Members shivered in appreciation and anticipation. The nights had been long. One week after the midwinter solstice they were looking forward to the return of the light.

Perched like half-asleep muttonbirds in a row, waiting for a lazy wave to come rolling up to their doorstep, the Crew sat astride their boards and had a chat, every now and then interrupted by one of them disappearing down a wave, as their turn had arrived. Waiting for a turn and sharing waves was fundamental to ensuring everyone got plenty of waves and had a good time. Surf courtesy 101. Give way to people who have been waiting the longest. It’s not rocket science, nor is it brain surgery. Gathered there on the day and sharing waves were The Reefshark, master of the giant people-eating wave, and Chief Switchfoot, aquatic ballet dancer, given to performing amazing feats of one-foot hopping balance, and, occasionally, of loss thereof. Also present were The Snake Catcher, bounty hunter of all who would drop in, snake, sneak or hustle, and The Pocket Rocket Grommet, whizzing up and down even the tiniest face like there was no tomorrow. Completing the set was Baboon Arse, proud owner of a pink and shiny arse pointing resolutely to the sky no matter what size wave it got on, and, latest and brand new addition to The Crew, Snow White, so named for his exceptionally translucent and pearly complexion. On stormy nights when the moon gets hidden behind blankets of cloud and the world goes black all over, when he closes his eyes and shuts his mouth he vanishes from sight, his African descent assuring perfect camouflage.

With the coming up of the sun, inevitably, came the coming down of the people. There were orange and white streaks in the eastern sky when Chief Switchfoot nudged Baboon Arse, almost knocking him off his perch and, rudely, waking him up.

‘Hmmmphfffrrrfl?’, said Baboon Arse.

‘See those two over there?’, asked Chief Switchfoot.

Baboon Arse turned his head in the direction indicated by the Chief’s pointy finger and peered myopically at the boatramp, site of their pre-dawn wave-assessments and surf-viability deliberations. He yawned and scratched the pink and shiny arse.

‘What, those two chicks?’ There were two vaguely female-looking shapes striding down the boat ramp, determinedly clutching boards under their arms and heading for the water.

‘Yes, those two chicks.’

‘What about them?’

The Chief leaned forward and frowned, his eyebrows wiggling up and down ominously.  

‘They’re snakes’, he hissed.

‘Really? I never seen ’em before’, said the Baboon, whose command of grammar and syntax did not stretch beyond primary school grade three, at which stage he was removed from school and put into permanent detention.

‘Believe me, they are’, nodded the Chief. ‘I know one of them. Yesterday she paddled right up to me here and sat square on the inside. She goes “how’s your daughter?”, cos she knows her, and then just as I’m saying “good” or whatever, she spun around and jumped on the first wave that came along and hooted off!’. The Chief’s beard bristled with indignation at the recollection of the injustice.

‘Right’, Baboon said thoughtfully, rubbing his chin with a sound like sandpaper scraping on tarmac, ‘well, we better keep an eye on them.’

A solitary wave chose just that exact moment to rise up melancholically in front of them, and, indicating by a barely perceptible incline of its head its willingness to accommodate a quiet, careful and respectful ride in decency and good taste, laid out a meticulously groomed green carpet, inviting participation from humans. Baboon spun around, thrashing wildly, erratically and ineffectively in the water, like a non-swimmer with punctured floaties in the deep end of a giant jacuzzi, and, as the Chief and the others looked on, disappeared in a cascade of flying white froth. Moments later, as inexorable as the sun in the morning, the arse rose from the depths to stick out high above the wall of the wave, accompanied by a long and protracted death rattle from somewhere deep down in the guts of the wave.

‘woohoohoohoohoohoohoohoo ...’.

The arse vanished into the twilight of the middle distance.

The echoes rolled around the mountains on the other side of the bay, bounced off them and came seeping back in delay, causing earaches and migraines to the Crew Members left behind. The Snake Catcher moved into position. He was next in line for a wave, and went to hug Take-Off Rock just a little bit closer. On a small day it payed to be hard next to it, to take advantage of the re-bounding effect of the water of the sea on the rock, adding extra impetus to any surfer’s attempt to launch themselves into a wave.

He looked out to sea, scouting for the next wave. He looked to the rock, assessing the water movement. He looked back out to sea, casting his eye over the water. He looked back to the rock.

He blinked.

A human figure had materialised between himself and the rock. He did a double take. Two seconds ago it hadn’t looked like there was enough space between him and the rock to squeeze in a drowning rat, let alone a human.

It was female in appearance, though only by proxy, from a distance, and by default. There was a long pointy nose, sticking out at 45 degree angles from the head. There was a chin that sloped away and disappeared into a wetsuit, and there was a ponytail like a second nose poking out of the back of the head. The overall impression was that of a constipated woodpecker in neoprene.

The apparition opened its mouth and bared its fangs in what was, presumably, meant to pass for a smile. It nodded brightly at the Snake Catcher.

‘Goodday.’

The Snake Catcher stared back, slack-jawed. He blinked again. A wavelet splashed against the rock and injected salt water into his mouth. He shut his mouth, opened it again, spat and started coughing.

‘You don’t look happy’, the Neoprene Woodpecker informed him kindly.

‘What?’, uttered the Snake Catcher in bewilderment. ‘No, I’m ... hey, what ...?’

And as he was trying to line up the appropriate words in his mental landscape, currently clouded and troubled by unaccountable, irresponsible and impermissible events of a nefarious nature, the Neoprene Woodpecker twisted around like a category four cyclone putting Tracy to shame, flayed wildly with her forelimbs, and pulled into the next wave that came along. The one that the Snake Catcher had been waiting for since the graceless departure of Baboon Arse. The wave that it was his turn to catch.

He went green in the face.

Beside him the Chief gestured emphatically.

‘See? That’s what I meant’, he exclaimed. ‘That’s exactly what she was doing the other day. She’s a dirty, rotten snake!’

The Snake Catcher’s face slowly took on a deep shade of red, then purple. Heart attack, cardiac arrest and kidney failure announced their imminent arrival.

‘What the fuck ...’. He swore at length and with feeling, then, catching the next wave, set off in hot pursuit. He clearly felt that he had a name to live up to.

The remaining Crew Members twisted sideways on their boards and curiously peaked into the distance, down the line. They saw the Snake Catcher follow the Woodpecker Snake out of the water. They exchanged glances. It looked like surf rage might be on the cards.

In the meantime Baboon Arse had almost completed the return journey from the back of woop-woop where he had fetched up, asthmatically dragging himself against the current and the tide back towards the departure point, where the rest of The Crew were waiting. He passed the two wildly gesticulating figures of the Snake Catcher and The Woodpecker Snake at a short distance. The discussion seemed heated. Snippets of conversation could be heard over the sound of waves breaking, the breeze whistling and seagulls shitting on the heads of unsuspecting tourists performing Tai-Chi on the beach. Bits of shit landed in their polystyrene foam take-away cups of steaming coffee sitting in the sand next to them.

‘... it’s just basic courtesy, that’s all, lady’, he overheard the Snake Catcher say to the Uncaught Snake. With that the Snake Catcher turned around and made to walk away.

The Neoprene Woodpecker Snake had different ideas. She shook a bony finger at him, raised her voice and shouted:

‘Don’t you dare turn your back on me when I’m talking to you!’

At that the Snake Catcher spun around back to her, looked at her and spat:

‘Ah, fuck off!’.

Clearly the discussion about courtesy had ended in an unpromising impasse.

As the Snake Catcher stalked off back to the water, Baboon Arse scratched his chin thoughtfully. It hadn’t looked like a happy ending. He dug his finger in his nose, extracted a booger, examined it critically, and, nodding appreciatively, stuck it in his mouth and ate it. His brain cells, all five of them, were buzzing manically in the vast open cavern of his skull. It was obvious that something needed to be done here. He pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head violently. Two thin columns of smoke trailed up from out of his ears and a few fleas dropped out of his hair. They screamed for their mothers as they fell into the water and drowned in horrible agony. He didn’t mind. There were plenty to go around.

He reached a conclusion, and, having survived the precarious decision making process relatively unharmed with only minor and negligible psychological trauma and brain cell destruction, slowly lifted his arms, covered in a thick layer of red fur, out of the water and started paddling again. His progress through the water was matched by the progress of The Woodpecker Snake on the beach, and as she waded back into the water he pulled in right behind her. He fixed his tiny piggy eyes on the back of her shoulders and kept pace with her as she paddled back out again.

Sure enough, she headed straight back to the inside of Departure Rock. Having watched the proceedings on the beach with rising interest, heart rate and blood pressure, Chief Switchfoot was still sitting there, waiting for his turn at the next wave. The Neoprene Woodpecker, The Uncaught Snake, She Of No Morality And Or Brain, had obviously been perfectly impervious to any and all argumentation patiently, diplomatically and indulgently put forward by the Snake Catcher out of the kindness of his heart and for the greater good, benefit and enlightenment of mankind and womankind in general, because she prepared to do the exact same thing all over again, clearly not intending to take a blind bit of notice of anything that had been said on the subject of courtesy in the surf. This blatant disregard for reason and fairness puzzled the Crew to no end. They were gobsmacked. Baffled. Stunned, as it were, by such a display of heedless and callous obstinate idiocy and arrogance. It was only later, when they heard from a third source that The Woodpecker Snake was, in fact, a deeply religious person intensely involved in the workings and machinations of A Church, possibly The Church Of The Poisoned Mind, that it finally all made sense. Of course. Everyone knew that the Eleventh Commandment, the one that had just missed out on making the Top Ten, was Thou Shalt Do Whatever Thou Bloody Well Wanteth And Fuck Every Other Bastard. It is a principle of morality not commonly well understood by the uneducated lay populace at large, and is an aspect of intricate and ineffable theology, a corner stone of True Faith, that can only be grasped by a handful of Initiated Chosen Few, and only after many years of deep and intense study of the inside of one’s own arse.

It explained a lot, if not everything about her behaviour.

Baboon Arse however, meanwhile, had no access to that kind of information, and if he had had it would have made no difference. Once set on a course he was not going to deviate from it, and his eyes locked onto the back of The Woodpecker Snake with an intensity last displayed on this world by the captain of the Titanic as he looked firmly and determinedly away from the iceberg, with the rock-hard conviction, steeled by his many years of faithful and pious attendance of The Church Of People With Wet And Smelly Feet, that, if he believed strongly enough for long enough with all of his heart and from the woe-begone sinful murky gut of his immortal soul, the iceberg would not, in actual fact, be really there at all.

The years following the events of 1912 had, inexplicably, seen a considerable drop in popularity and attendance of the captain’s church, much to the surprise and dismay of its leadership. Their numbers would not return to something approaching their former glory until the election of Donald Trump, much later.

Baboon Arse followed hard on her trail, staying right behind her the whole way. As she snuck herself in between Chief switchfoot and Departure Rock without a heed or care for anyone else in the world, The Baboon took up position just downstream from her, half a metre down from where she had put herself. He looked at her back and bided his time. He had an uncanny feeling he would not have to wait very long.

Unfortunately he was only too right.

Within mere seconds of the joint arrival of The Uncaught Snake and The Baboon back at the rock, a wave announced itself. Beckoning enthusiastically towards Chief Switchfoot, whose turn to catch one it was, the wave rose up majestically in all its glory, and opened up a watery way of clear green crystal for the Chief to slide into.

Before he could do as much as blink or flap his ears, The Snake moved like lightning. Baboon Arse, lying in wait behind her, picked up immediately on the tell-tale twitching of her shoulder blades as she prepared to spin around and perform another act of heinous snake-ism. Fast as the wind he turned around himself, all senses primed for this very moment, and started paddling furiously with all the might contained in arms that needed 4WD winches to keep his knuckles from dragging over the ground on dry land. Right next to him, within touching distance, appeared the right arm, elbow and fang of The Woodpecker Snake. However, having cunningly positioned himself half a metre downstream, the Baboon had the edge. He dropped into the hole first. Coming hard at him from the inside was a neoprene elbow, the hard rails of a board, and a fang smelling of rotting meat. The Snake’s board crashed into his. Not giving up or giving way the Baboon leaned hard to the right, simultaneously shoving the Woodpecker Snake’s board with his left rail. Screams and shouts of fury emanated from the spray cloud to his left, the boards clanged and crashed, then there was a sensation of something tumbling wildly out of control on that inside, and the Baboon rose up and jumped to his feet like a diprotodon rising up out of the mud for one last look at the sun and the dry rainless sky before resigning itself to a future as a fossil.

The Woodpecker Snake went arse over tit over the front of her board. Her board stood up then got spat out by the crashing white water, cartwheeling over the lip of the wave. As she went headfirst under water, a retreating wall of peeling water disappeared into the wide blue yonder. And there, sticking out proudly and waving around in the breeze like the Jolly Roger of a pirate ship, was the shiny pink arse of the Baboon, triumphantly shooting down a long and rollicking slope of green glass, all the way to woop-woop.

The Snake Uncaught No More.

Justice had been served.