Delmar students are pictured in our KIDLINK computer lab area of the
Delmar Media Center. Ashley and Lisa stand in front of the display board
with messages from Saudi Arabia. In the picture below Hanvi, Kim and Heather
locate the city of Dhahran where our friends in Saudi Arabia live.
With all the talk of mad cows, I felt I have to tell you this story. It's another C. Nick Point thing... (I can't help myself).
When we left our rainforest camp, a bunch of us decided to hike back up over the mountain and come back to Bukit Lawang through some of the slash-and-burn farms that had sprung up on the outskirts of the park. A few of the kids had bad blisters from the trek the day before, so they took the short-cut back which meant crossing the river half a dozen times. We had Hiking God, the native Batak guide, with us again and he put us to the task as we went forever upwards and onwards for seven hours. The trip was pretty uneventful, except for the time that Super Dave discovered his bloody sock from the leech that had drained him of his plasma for a few hours before dropping off. We got pretty spread out on the trail since one girl got scared of the steep muddy paths and had to be helped by Hiking God step-by-step up and down every mountain. (When we got back she said she would rather die than ever do that again, but a few months later she was proud as a peacock of her achievement!).
Our group of trail blazers was chugging along the trail ahead of the others and we burst into a clearing at the edge of the park. From the soft, filtered light of the primary rainforest to the blazing light of the freshly fallen forest! It nearly blinded us! All around us was devastation! Tall trees lay in a tangled mess and the ground was blackened with the ash from burned brush. We had heard the chain saws in the distance when we were deep in the forest but we blocked out the noise like just another unwanted pollutant we had hoped to leave behind. When we saw the majestic dipterocarp giants fallen into twisted heaps and an old, oily chain saw propped against a nearby stump, we were stunned and shocked and dismayed. In a nearby field stood a farmers lean-to and a dozen scrawny cows grazed on the new grass where the rainforest once stood. The air was still and we could hear the call of the rhinoceros hornbill in the forest nearby. It seemed to be mourning the loss of its home, or at least that's what we wanted to believe. We knew that terrible things had happened to the plants and the wildlife that once lived in this corner of the forest and the spirits of the forest were calling out.
The cows looked up at us and seemed to smile as if mocking our feelings.
They bellowed and tossed their heads and began to move towards us in a
menacing way. Now we had never been confronted with mad cows before, but we
knew that they meant trouble. Maybe they were some of those cannibal types
that had eaten their own kind and gone berserk! We had read about the ones in
England, but none of us remembered clearly the facts of the matter. We should
have paid more attention in science class I guess. But we had to do something
fast, since the cows were now coming on fast and bellowing like crazy as they
ran. We decided that the sensible thing to do was to run away. All except
Super Dave. Neither leeches nor cows could bother this dude! He ran to the
nearby stump, grabbed the chain saw, cranked it into action, and went
screaming and racing right toward the herd of charging cows! The cows stopped
dead in their tracks. Wide eyed, mouths open, silent, watching in disbelief
as this 4- foot tall chubby guy came running across the field at them with a
chain saw ripping at the sky over his head! Ha! You should have seen those
future fast food burgers turn and run! They barreled right over the farmer's
little shack, smashing it into pieces, and tore off into the forest on the
other side of the clearing!
We all cheered Super Dave's heroic actions and ran to back him up and to show
him we really weren't afraid, but were just using a tactic of war to fool the
enemy.
As we hooted and hollered and leaped around in a victory dance, we caught a glimpse of Super Dave as he ran past us in the opposite direction with a look of terror on his face. He no longer carried the chain saw. The silence was only broken by the sound of the humongous water buffalo snorting and grunting as he crashed out of the bush where the mad cows had run and bulldozed his way towards us in a fury. We froze in our tracks with death just seconds away! More victims of the mad cows! I could smell the foul breath of the beast and see the blood in its eyes and my life flashed for a second before my eyes. As my heart was sucked up into my throat , I gasped and watched as the crazed beast tumbled into the dust and skidded to a halt right before my feet! I fainted in a dead heap as it seemed the appropriate thing to do.
When I came to a few seconds later, Hiking God was kneeling over the dazed bull pulling out the dart he had fired into him with his blowgun. The dart was tipped with the dilute poison of a rainforest vine and the poison reacted swiftly and knocked the buffalo senseless for about ten minutes. We didn't wait for the beast to awaken, but hearing the cries of Super Dave echoing down the forest trail, we gathered our wits together again and hurried off into the bush. On the way out, we tossed the chain saw into a convoy of leaf cutter ants which swarmed over the saw, picked it up, and carried it off over their heads like war booty to take on some of the giant leaves of the forest.
Nick