Our home in Malaysia, in Bukit Mertajam, can at times be a peaceful place.
That peace can be over-ridden by lorries with straight through exhaust systems, or a new mosque near our house calling for the faithful to prayers with the loudspeakers at full power at 5:30am in the morning, some of the offspring of the Ng family’s nine brothers and sisters, gathering to play and have fun, the animals and birds calling their mates, or the frogs croaking after the nearly daily deluge of rain.
Opposite to the house is a small patch of what I call jungle, with tall grass, high trees, containing a wide variety of wild life I am sure, including I expect snakes. I have not seen one yet, but my eyes are always aware that there could be the hypnotic python snake Kaa from Rudyard Kipling’s book the Jungle Book, lurking just ready to get me in his gaze.
Every so often on this trip as I have been standing in my garden I would hear a crack coming from across the road. Then there would be a pinging or rushing sound as something fell to the ground or fell through the leaves.
In this patch of “jungle” are rubber trees, left over from when the land was a rubber plantation. Then, I understood what was happening.
In the rubber trees are seed pods, which at the moment are ripe and germinated, ready to be scattered and sewn.
The seed pod springs open with a crack, firing the two large and hard seeds great distances through the air like bullets.
So take care walking under a rubber tree, it might attack you.
It is a dangerous place this jungle, the world we live in.
Watch out, protect yourself, wear a hard hat, there are horrid things and people out to attack you.