A 16-year old boy was found dead in Malaysia (*these photos may be from a previous incident in Indonesia, East Borneo - see comments 3, 5) after being swallowed by a 10 meter-long python. Camping in the jungle is always a risk, even on a school outing to a national park. I don’t wish to name the national park to give it any bad press--I spend four wonderful days there and even used it for the setting for one of my short stories. I once sketched out a story about a man on a death wish who gets swallowed by a python, so this story struck close to home. Besides, this could happen anywhere where pythons live.
In the late 1980’s, a man was attacked behind his rural house and the photo was on the front page of all the newspapers with the python wrapped around the man with its head over the man’s head and shoulders where it apparently became stuck—it was a rather large man. (Yes, this was the inspiration for my story idea.) I’ve also seen photos of a python trying to eat a wild boar. So a boy would not be a too big of a problem.
I’ve also seen plenty of photos of children and adults being cut out of crocodiles, including one at a different national park taken days before I had visited there with my then 16-year old son, and we had even come upon crocodile on a trail; it was crossing an old river bed into the nearby sea. The moment it saw us, it fled. It was either him or us.
At a third national park, a park ranger told us about how we had just missed a ferocious fight between a python and a proboscis monkey in plain view. At the same park, as far as I know, a python still lives beneath a popular canteen feeding off the rats and perhaps a stray monkey or two.
In my 25 years of living here, I have heard plenty of stories of adults being killed by wild boars, elephants (they grab you by the trunk, throw you down and stomp on you) and of course tigers.
Anytime you go into the jungle and camp you’re at risk, but the odds of you seeing a python, a wild boar, an elephant, or a tiger are quite rare, let alone being attacked by one. So don’t worry too much about it. Enjoy the beauty, but also don’t take unnecessary risks.
As for me holding that crocodile, that wasn’t in the jungle or along a river but on the set of Anna and the King, also filmed in Malaysia The handlers were right beside me along with a couple of edgy elephants that looked like they too wanted to have a go with me.
As a father of three boys, my heart goes out for the parents. This is an awful way for your child -- for anyone -- to die.
Borneo Expat Writer
*Here is a more recent account of a man found inside a 7-meter long python in Indonesia.
*Here is a more recent account of a man found inside a 7-meter long python in Indonesia.
Here are links to some
of my author-to-author interviews of first novelists:
Golda
Mowe author of Iban Dream and Iban Journey.
Preeta
Samarasan author of Evening is the Whole Day.
Chuah
Guat Eng, author of Echoes of Silence and Days
of Change.
Plus:
Five part Maugham
and Me series
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