26th december

A strange thing happened last night...
After midnight, I got up for a pee. As I came down the stairs into the kitchen, I saw three lights coming down the road. It cannot have been anything motorised because there was no sound. They cannot have been runners because the lights did not waver - they were constant. I can only think they were cyclists but they were going quite fast on a very bumpy road which would have been very, very difficult in the dark and there was still no sound which is very strange. It was surreal, slightly unnerving. They almost appeared to be floating down the road at quite a fast pace. Perhaps it was the Holy Trinity on their way somewhere.

World Service Sport on in the morning so I’m happy as a sand boy on the balcony. I am still in the habit of dismantling the table and taking it up and down the stairs to the balcony in the am and pm. I am becoming interested in identifying the birds and the trees out of these moth-eaten books that are lying around. Montezuma Oropendula, Lineated Woodpecker, Scarlet-Rumped Cacique, hummingbirds and etc - I have you all sussed!
While I am up there, I see my first snake. I happened to look over the side to below and there it was, and it looked mean. It was lying close to the gulley beneath the eaves, around six feet long, jet black all the way down with some yellow markings here and there. I could see Negra laying dozing only around twenty feet away. Her eyes are blinking lazily open and I’ would have expected her to have seen it get that close. Natives of the country are encouraged to kill poisonous snakes and my immediate reaction was to get the shotgun, so I did. I put the shotgun together quite quickly and the snake had hardly moved. I got a cartridge, loaded up and pointed at the snake.
“Where should I aim,” I wonder to myself. “The body? The head?” Dead easy.
It’s too easy. It doesn’t even know it’s being pointed at and I can’t pull the trigger. It might not even be poisonous. I stay well out of its way just in case and watch it as it eventually sidles away into the longer grass by the side of the swamp. Then I lose it. I describe it later to Over and he informs me that it isn't dangerous, which is a relief to me. Wouldn’t want it biting someone tomorrow… like me, for example.