Tent Fighting
I used to work for a crappy hotel in the middle of nowhere in Portugal. The place was about 8 miles from the nearest town as the crow flies, but to get there you had to go over about 18 miles of road and dirt track. It was isolated. The owners couldn't be bothered stumping up for staff accommodation so I lived in a tent about 3/4 of a mile from the hotel, on a spur of land that over looked a lake. They worked us like dogs (18 hour days were the average, 20 hours not exceptional) so the whole time we were in a constant state of exhaustion. This was also not helped by the large amounts of alcohol consumed.

One night I finished up in the kitchen-bar area at 3am, ready and fresh to start work again at 6.30am. I got a candle and tramped the 3/4 of a mile to my tent. It was absolutely pitch black and I knew as I walked along that one side of the path was a steep thorn covered slope down to the lake - if I fell (drunk as I was) I wasn't getting out. I got to my tent and started to drop off.

Then I noticed something move underneath the tent. Something wriggly, hissy and strong. Something whose lump felt distinctly reptilian. Immediately I jumped to the conclusion that it was a snake (I'd seen several that day). I can't emphasise how much I hate snakes. I really really hate them.

I started to panic... drunkenly I thought that a snake had taken shelter under my tent and was now pissed off at being lain on. It moved and I moved. It hissed and a tiny dribble of pee appeared on my boxer shorts. It moved again so I picked up one of the bricks I used to put my shoes on and started flailing wildly at the floor.

If anyone had been watching, the sight of a drunken, semi-naked man going crazy with a brick in a tent might have been quite amusing. For me, however, the increasing sounds of agitation from the creature below merely reinforced my drunken perception that I was fighting for my life. The cold bile of pure panic tasted bitter in my mouth as I struck again and again at the enraged creature below me. Finally I struck home, heard something crack and the noise stopped.

In the silence I sat there... sweat dripping off me and the smell of pee diffusing through the tent. I didn't sleep that night. When dawn came I gingerly unzipped my tent, leapt for freedom and almost landed on one of the hotel dogs who had come to say hello. The dog looked at me, I at the dog. It sniffed, and started rooting around under the tent before coming out with a rather harmless looking, yet very dead, lizard clamped in its jaws. The kind of lizard the dogs chased, and occasionally caught, on a daily basis. The wave of relief pouring over me was pretty quickly replaced with a wave of shame and guilt.

Still haven't ever been quite so terrified as that night though.
(Zapiola zip-zap-zop, Thu 23 Jul 2009, 23:59, Reply)