Cheese and biscuits for supper; Crocodile dreams…..

Creamy Camembert and fresh slices of mango are a taste sensation difficult to match. All the better for a dab of sweet Chilli sauce….

This is our supper on  the deck overlooking the swollen Save River. The waters below us are ribbons of dirty cream foam curling along on the twisting currents.

This afternoon I watched a medium sized crocodile drifting sideways downstream ..it allowed itself to drift across the current for a few minutes, then deliberately turned at right angles and tacked the other way. I am sure it was testing each stream of scented water, each entwined current, for any hint of a possible meal!

croc smelling the water

So now after a long day on the edge of this mighty river, and my supper of cheese, I retire…and I dream….and dream…..and DREAM …(as I usually do after a meal of cheese at night!)

I am a crocodile.

I AM a crocodile! 

crocodile dreams…..

I can feel the full length of my scaled body against the flow of the warm water as I drift. I am not very long by crocodile standards, quite slim, and easily I turn my body at an angle to slide with the current so that my snout is always testing fresh water, fresh scent….

I can ‘feel’, can ‘taste’ the  scents in the muddy water, no need for eyes, just pure sensation of tastes and tantalizing hints if what has been through this water upstream of me.

Scent of cattle and dung, humans washing, soap and urine, but these are faint, overridden by sensation of bat guano falling into water from overhanging clefts in the gorges upstream, hippos and elephants crossing the deep waters….decaying branches and vegetation and the occasional rubbery scent of a lost and floating flip-flop, washed by the rising waters from a sandbank or rock upstream while the unsuspecting owner bathed or washed their clothes.

This whole world of smell and warm water envelopes me, a sensation as good as any 3D movie! I wake with a strange elatedness, anticipation…..!