by Evan Antin
We’d driven right by the crocodile bridge, but I wanted to find a spot on my own, away from the tourists, so I jumped back into the rental car and drove down the coast, looking for promising locations. As dusk was coming on, I stopped at a sheltered, quiet lagoon, hopped out, and shined my flashlight out into the water. A pair of huge, bright, orangey eyes stared back. Oh my God, there he is! This was the closest I’d ever come to an American croc in the wild, and I was suddenly panic-stricken at the possibility of letting him get away. I was looking right at him. The water was clear, so I could see that it was shallow beneath him. He was a manageable size—probably a juvenile, between five and six feet long. If he’d been a snake, I would’ve been in the water in a heartbeat, knowing I’d have to grab him quick and that I’d have an advantage in the water if I could keep him in sight.
Not so much with a croc. They’re far faster in water than on land, so if I dove in, he’d be long gone. I crept silently toward the water, wading in an inch at a time, keeping my light near his eyes so I could see him better than he could see me. The water reached my knees, then my thighs, but I was totally focused on being this close to making contact. When I got within ten feet, he submerged to the bottom, but he didn’t otherwise move. After a few minutes of stealth, I was directly over him—and he, amazingly, was still there.
It was now or never. I put my flashlight in my mouth (do not try this at home while you restrain your own croc, because it’s a great way to break a few teeth) and lunged for him, getting a grip right in front of his shoulders. The croc flipped out, swinging his tail and clasping and unclasping his jaw angrily. I knew I had to wait him out, that he’d settle down if I could briefly keep him still. I focused on not hurting him and not getting bit.
After about twenty seconds, the croc relaxed—and that’s when I realized I’d been so focused on getting him, I hadn’t thought about what would happen next. Here I was with the first croc I’d ever caught in the wild in my hands, and I didn’t even have a camera. I might never get the chance to document a moment like that again. I stood there by the lagoon, my clothes soaked, my arms full of crocodile, thinking, What the hell?
Call it ingenuity or stupidity, but the only idea that came to me was to make an equipment run back to the hotel. It made sense in the moment, nearly ten years ago. For the record, this is something I would never do now. But that night, I carried the croc to the rental car, tied my belt around his snout, and put him on the floor in front of the back seat. Before I could think hard enough about this plan to reconsider, I was driving up the coast road, minding the speed limit with exceptional care so I wouldn’t get pulled over.
At the hotel I parked far away from any other cars, checked on the croc (who was completely mellow), and hurried to my room. I figured I’d grab my cameras and my girlfriend and we’d head out together to film.
Not so fast. I walked in, and she looked up at me in midsentence, phone in her hand, her eyes red and wide. Her voice dropped instantly from pitched panic to a lower, more even tone. “Oh my God, he’s here,” she said, sizing me up, clearly noting the wet clothes and the muddy forearms and hands. “He looks fine.”
I glanced at the clock and realized I’d lost track of time and been gone a lot longer than I’d said I’d be. I opened my mouth to say I was sorry just as she started to cry. “What the hell, Evan? Where have you been?”
I felt terrible. I wrapped her in a big, wet hug, told her everything was fine, and said I was very, truly sorry.
Then I waited, like, three whole minutes to make sure we were okay before fessing up to what I’d done.
By the way, I have a live croc in the car. I’d love for you to help me get some pictures with it?
To her eternal credit, after telling me I was out of my flipping mind, she put on her boots, slung a camera bag over her shoulder, and headed for the door. In a matter of minutes she’d gone from ready to alert the embassy to toting a camera and helping me out.
As we were walking toward the car, all the feelings I should have had before I put the croc in there hit me. Panic. Fear. Worry about getting arrested in a foreign country. Worry about mutilating yet another rental car.
The croc was still where I’d left him, awake and calm. I knew I owed him a proper return trip. We hopped into the car and took him back to the exact place where I’d found him. I popped him out of the back of the car, took the belt off, and held him for five more minutes so I could talk about his habitat, his diet, and his predatory habits while my girlfriend gamely manned the camera and a light. When the five minutes were up, I carried him to the edge of the water, exactly where I’d taken him out, lowered him to the ground, and jumped back toward the shore. He swam away immediately.
If I met that croc tomorrow under the same circumstances, I am positive I’d be happy just to see him in his environment, living his life. A lot of years have passed, and I have had so many amazing adventures and interactions with wildlife all around the world that I no longer feel the need to put my hands on every single interesting creature I see. But back then, I was incredibly hungry for that experience; the idea of just letting the first crocodile I’d ever encountered in the wild keep going about his business without getting up close and personal never even crossed my mind.
Looks Like This Is the End
Our next stop was an ecotourism lodge, and that was where the tenor of the entire trip changed. While we were checking in, somebody broke into my car and stole everything in it. In monetary terms, it wasn’t much: some dirty clothes and my spare shoes, a snake hook and a machete, a backpack with a hammock. My fer-de-lance rain jacket. A video camera.
But in personal terms, it was nothing less than devastating. Along with my travel gear, the thief had taken the box that contained hundreds of hours of video footage on mini DVs and my still camera with all my digital photos from the entire trip. That footage included the Galápagos tortoise and pink iguanas and sea lions lounging on the sand between sunbathers. It had my first sloth encounter and my first anaconda sighting. My arduous and breathtaking trek into the Darién Gap and the guide who saw me through it. The coral snake that could have killed me; the little tamandua who played so hard she left puncture marks all over my arms and chest and back; the tiny capuchins who put their fingers in my ears and my nose; the sea turtles; and the great and powerful crocodile who had ridden in the back of my car.
I am not an angry person. I don’t have a nasty temper. I believe that most people basically have good intentions and that the same things are important to all of us. And so it surprised me how freaking livid I felt after my stuff was stolen. Now those documented memories and experiences would exist only in my head. For days I stomped around and lay in wait for somebody to say or do something offensive enough for me to destroy them. (Luckily, this didn’t happen.) I’d saved and planned for a year to take that trip, to have those experiences, and to create the AV catalog of them that I considered to be my life’s work up until that point. I was seething inside.
I’d started my trip at a fit and muscular 225 pounds. After hiking, climbing, hitchhiking, going hungry, and sacrificing in every way necessary to get to the places I wanted to see, meet the animals I wanted to meet, and document my experiences, I’d be going home 34 pounds lighter and basically empty-handed.
It took me a while to settle down and realize that even if my photos and videos had been stolen, nothing could rob me of the experiences I’d had over those two months. And I did have a small, critical cache of mementos—the handpicked photos and videos I’d e-mailed to the producer. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
* * *
Back in the States, I used those precious few remaining records and a few I’d made before my trip to create my first full-length reel. My girlfriend came up with the hook Beast Charmer, insisting I needed to “brand” myself. I figured it could only help me. The reel opened with this disclaimer: “Do not attempt any of the activities you see here. Evan is trained, skilled, and very experienced. All caution
must be taken with wild animals.”
Confidentially, it’s true that I was experienced. And sometimes I was skilled. But trained? To wrestle crocodiles? To hook snakes? To play with orphaned mammals? To extract venom from deadly vipers? To hack my way through the jungle with a machete?
Not so much.
I was learning all of that as I went, one wild experience at a time.
PART THREE
Southeast Asian Quest
6
Thailand and Cambodia
In the summer of 2011 I made my way to Thailand and Cambodia for forty days and nights of hot, sweaty jungle travel. It was just what I needed to clear my head and get my blood flowing again after months of studying like a madman in veterinary school. I liked the classroom and the fast pace of learning, and I loved the hands-on labs and experiences even more, but by the summer I was way overdue for an outdoor kind of adventure.
* * *
My trip started in Khao Yai National Park, the oldest national park in Thailand, a couple hours and a whole world away from the bright lights and urban pace of Bangkok. The park is geographically unique, especially because over 80 percent of it remains forest while the rest of the wilderness in southern Thailand is rapidly disappearing, thanks to logging, road building, and spreading population centers.
You’d never know that’s a problem within the park. It feels like you’re in the endless wild out there. The first day I hiked to the Pha Diew Die viewpoint to take in the scenery. At over three thousand feet above sea level, flat rocks on the cliffside offer views out over Thailand’s answer to the Grand Canyon—vast, heavily forested, with one mountain ridge after another as far as you can see.
Trekking through the forest jungle, I kept my head on a swivel, looking for any (or all) of the fantastic creatures that live within the park. Khao Yai is home to more than seven hundred animal species—and those are just the ones we know about. There are lots of endangered animals among them, including Siamese crocodiles, Asian elephants, tigers, and hornbills. There are also bears, pythons, leopards, wild pigs, multiple types of primates, and some seriously badass scorpions.
The scorpions were among the critters I most wanted to see, and I made slow progress through the jungle because I kept stopping to peek under logs and poke through leaf debris in hopes of finding one. Finally, at the base of a decomposing stump, I hit the jackpot—a five-inch scorpion with a deep bluish-black hue.
I love scorpions—everything about them. The big snappers. The fact that they look like they’re wearing armor (and they kind of are). The stinging tails! Those tails are some of the nastiest weapons in the arachnid world. This blue guy was a pincher, digging in much harder than I expected when I picked him up to take a closer look. I held him by the last segment of his tail—the business end of any scorpion. Whatever he can do with his snappers is nothing compared to the damage he can inflict if he holds on long enough to sling that tail forward and shoot its hook into you. The venom generally won’t kill you (unless you happen to be allergic), but it will for sure hurt. The whole time I was holding my new blue friend for the camera and admiring his incredibly powerful grip, he was dripping venom all over me. It was running down my hands—which, to be honest, were way too scratched up from hiking and herping for that to be wise.
I made quick work getting my video, explaining that scorpions live in all types of climates and landscapes. They are one of nature’s hardiest creatures, capable even of slowing their metabolism to a near stop in bad weather or when food is scarce—and then fully recovering afterward. These guys are built to last.
After a few minutes of bonding, I set Big Blue back in the leaves, where he could find quick camouflage. Then I washed my hands the best I could with my drinking water, scrubbing them on the hem of my T-shirt. I couldn’t afford to lose a single day in the park to the pain and suffering of scorpion envenomation.
Nature’s Big Top
In Khao Yai, every morning brings the sound of gibbons calling each other in the jungle. The sound is so remarkable—one part whoop, one part birdcall, one part slide whistle. It starts with one individual, but it often becomes a duet between a pair of these romantics—who couple up for life. For all the noise they make, gibbons are surprisingly elusive and difficult to see. They live almost exclusively in the trees, and they move wickedly fast (they are the fastest non-flying arboreal mammal), so while you may glimpse the shadow of one or hear it swinging around in the treetops while you’re in the forest, chances are by the time you focus your eyes it’ll be gone.
I met a PhD student named Jackie who was researching gibbons and convinced her to let me tag along on her telemetry treks. Telemetry is the most common method used for tracking wildlife in remote areas because it’s a harmless way to allow scientists to follow an animal’s movements and periodically check in to see what they’re up to. Since gibbons are most active in the morning, we set out from our campsite before dawn to find the troop.
Jackie had been observing one family for a few months, so she knew where to find them, even without her tracking equipment. I followed her as she walked quickly and quietly, first along a worn path and then through thick lowland grass surrounded by walls of jungle. Even as we got close and the sounds of the calls got louder, all I could see was a dense barrier of green, gray, and brown vegetation and shadows.
Just when I was starting to think our search would be fruitless, Jackie stopped at the edge of a small clearing and ducked down to peek into the opening. I copied her, and suddenly I could see the creatures I’d been hearing, live and in color. It was like stumbling onto a Cirque du Soleil rehearsal in the middle of the Thai jungle. Beautiful little gibbons launched themselves from tree to tree, spinning with grace and athleticism to cover as much as forty feet in a single swing. They looked like they were flying as they zipped across the canopy, creating momentum with nothing but some magical combination of their body weight, their musculature, and the flexibility of the branches. Their long, powerful arms propelled them, and they gripped each landing with the furry white hands that make them look like they’re always wearing mittens.
The mechanics that allow gibbons to travel so effectively make them unique among primates. They are lesser apes, not monkeys. The major differences between the two categories lie in the presence (or lack) of a tail (monkeys have them; apes do not), the animals’ size (apes are generally bigger), and the size of their brains (apes have larger brains and often exhibit great intelligence). Despite their classification, gibbons are among the smallest of the apes—up to twenty-five inches tall and usually well under thirty pounds. If they were bigger, they wouldn’t be able to swing and soar so gracefully or so high because the branches wouldn’t hold them. If they were smaller, they wouldn’t be able to generate the kind of force that powers them through the jungle. Of course, nobody’s perfect, and there is definitely a learning curve in mastering that kind of acrobatics. Every once in a while a gibbon takes a dive, and research suggests that it’s very common for these fabulous little trapeze artists to break bones and somehow survive to “fly” again.
Even now, sometimes that moment at the edge of the clearing replays in my mind, taking me back to that perfect morning and the opportunity I had to witness nature’s circus as half of an audience of two.
Tangled Up in Green
Jackie wasn’t the only fellow wildlife admirer I met in Khao Yai. At the beginning of my stay, I’d told a ranger I was especially interested in seeing local snakes. As my visit had gone on, I’d figured he didn’t care or had maybe forgotten, but on my last, rainiest morning in the park he found me near the station and waved me closer. We crept around the corner of the building, and he pointed up into the eaves. There, sheltered from the rain, were two snakes, two different species of green tree vipers, completely entwined with each other like some incredibly cool snakey braid. I’d never seen anything like it. There was no indication that they were copulating (after all, they were different species); it looked more like they were just snug
gling up on a wet day.
That was the first ranger I met who was fully aware that a venomous snake was in his area and was fine with it. He wasn’t afraid—he seemed just as fascinated as I was. I got some incredible pictures of those two snakes, and despite my almost constant desire to be a hands-on explorer, I never attempted to touch them. I didn’t know what had driven them to braid themselves together, but I wasn’t going to be the one to ruin it.
Don’t Cage the Elephant
In Chiang Mai Province in northern Thailand, Elephant Nature Park is a haven for abused elephants rescued from the tourism and illegal logging industries. This place will always hold a special place in my heart—although when I picked it as a destination, I had no idea what I was in for. All I knew was that the park was a legit rescue center and not a tourist trap, so I signed up to volunteer for a few days in hopes of getting firsthand experience with the elephants.
The park itself is an oasis, with a raised walkway under a thatched roof that offers visitors views over the property’s 250 acres and its elephant residents. Rule Number One was made clear at the gate: The park belongs to the elephants. Since most of them arrived after spending years or even decades in wretched lives of servitude, ensuring their comfort and happiness is everyone’s priority. The elephants do what they want, when they want, and if you’re a volunteer on the property, you’re there to serve them.
