River Monsters: True Stories of the Ones that Didn't Get Away by Wade Jeremy

Author:Wade, Jeremy [Wade, Jeremy]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780306819803
Publisher: Perseus Books Group
Published: 2011-04-04T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

RIVER STINGRAY

The tail is whipped forwards in a curve with the sting pointing to the area of body contact. The sting easily penetrates rubber boots and is powerful enough to be driven into wood.

Michael Goulding, Amazon: The Flooded Forest, 1989

THE DATE IS AUGUST 1993, and we are at Lago Grande again, the remote lake near José’s hut in the floodplain of the Rio Purus. I’ve beached my wooden canoe on the central island, in one of the few places where getting out on the shore is possible; everywhere else is either knee-deep mud or jungle right down to the water. But my relief at being able to get the circulation back into my buttocks is short lived. Although this is the dry season, with the water level near the bottom of its annual forty- to fifty-foot flood cycle, a storm has swept in and is blasting the lake’s surface.

I have two lines out, each baited with a dead piranha, half-pound red-bellies, lying on the bottom. The lines twitch and shudder from the impact of the raindrops, as distinct from the sharp continuous jumping followed by stillness that signals the attentions of other piranhas, so I resist the urge to check the baits. I picture them down there in the gloom: luminous silvery shapes reflecting the weak light from their small scales.

I saw an arapaima breach here yesterday, and for once I have halfdecent baits, rather than bare hooks, well placed to intercept it. I try to ignore my rain-soaked clothes and the chill that is starting to seep into my body, instead entering that mental state outside normal time in which everything contracts to one endless still moment. The rain on the water is like the roar of radio static, and plump droplets slide down the line, which, I now notice, is slowly spooling off the reel.

I pick up the rod and tighten into something heavy, which responds by wrenching the rod and ripping line from the reel. At length it slows and stops, becoming immobile. Just as I’m wondering if it’s snagged, it runs again, parallel to the bank. The sidestrain I’m applying doesn’t seem to affect its course, and its movement is strangely smooth. This doesn’t feel like a fish at all: there’s no sense of a tail beating—just long glides interspersed by immobility. Gradually I shorten the line, whose angle now tells me the creature is coming up. I feel a repeated jarring, then there’s a boil on the surface—not a swirl but a compact eruption. Then a repulsive warty limb emerges into the air, flailing from side to side behind a wall of spray. Halfway along its tapering brown length my eyes fix on the blurred shape of a four-inch blade: stingray.

The stingray is an animal that, until now, I’ve known only by reputation. But I know enough to be aware that they’re potentially lethal. This notoriety goes way back to the story of Odysseus, who was killed by a spear tipped with a stingray spine, thus fulfilling the prophecy that his death would come “from the sea.

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