Dragonious Predatorious

Today we found ourselves on the Island of Komodo.

                   I’m fairly sure that everyone has heard of this island mainly because of its most famous inhabitant, the Komodo Dragon.

                   The Komodo Dragon was only recently officially “discovered’ and studied. Rumors abounded over the several hundred years that the Dutch held sway over this vast area of the planet. Spices were the subject of their interests and as we all know, the Spice Trade was very lucrative and dangerous, having wars and skirmishes fought over them for centuries! It was not until the 1920’s that the Dutch sent a scientist to investigate the rumors. Much earlier, some Dutch sailors had reported a fire breathing dragon estimated at almost twenty feet long!

          It sounds like these sailors were spending just a little too much time at the grog tank because although it is the largest lizard (really a Monitor) on earth, the Komodo Dragon rarely exceeds seven feet in length.

          I wish that it were twenty feet and breathing fire! It would have made an already exciting visit to this island especially stimulating because it would have raised the Possibility of Death Index just a tad higher! These critters are already capable of hunting down and killing a human, just ask any of the indigenous people that got attacked and eaten!  Well, I guess you can’t ask them because of obvious reasons, so you’re just going to have to take my word for it. But over the last thirty-five years or so, there have been twenty-four KD attacks and of those, five have been fatal. When visiting, you are not allowed to have any open wounds, i.e., anything that would have the smell of blood, including a menstrual cycle. Although they can outrun a human for short distances we are not too concerned as there are bound to be any number of passengers in the “Mobility Challenged” category, so we think we can outrun them!

                             These guys are not a Hollywood fabrication, they are a serious predator and will feast on anything that lives or is dead. They are so good at grave robbing that the folks on Komodo have stopped burying their loved ones in anything but hard clay-like soil and they now cover the graves with piles of rocks to help thwart the graverobbers.

                             Komodo Dragons possess shark-like teeth, meaning very sharp and serrated, making the tearing of flesh a snap. If you get a chance to glance into a KD’s mouth you may ask, “Where’s the teeth?” Hah! They are hidden under their gums and become engaged at just the right moment as their success rate of foraging can attest to.  If that wasn’t enough, they also possess a venom of sorts that is not injected by fangs, it is contained within its saliva. These guys are the epitome of a monster-like creature as this saliva is quite prodigious and literally drools out of its mouth, no special effects needed! So…. when a KD bites and just wounds, it waits and tracks its prey for a few hours and thunk! It keels over and becomes dinner.

                   They do not make good pets.

                   Let’s move on to topics less gory, and just as deadly, but still germane to this Island.

                   Volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis are all very much entrenched in the locals’ everyday thoughts. Komodo and its 17,000 (!) island neighbors are all a part of the nation of the Republic of Indonesia. This country is the largest “archipelago country” and fourth largest populated country in the world. Plus, it contains some very exotic sounding and well-known places, such as, Java, Bali, Sumatra, and Krakatoa.

                   In December of 2004, on the day after Christmas, was the date…. and Sumatra was the closest site to that horrendous tsunami that came ashore after a 9.2 offshore earthquake. Its effects were felt over thousands of miles, any shoreline that was in a direct line from that epicenter was affected, some had their tsunamis measured at around a hundred feet high. Over 225,000 coastal living people were killed that day.

                   Not to be outdone, the tiny island of Krakatoa also had its day in the annals of geologic history. Over a several-day span in August of 1883, this island’s volcano blew up with a force not ever seen in recorded history. The blast was heard three-thousand miles away as the estimated decibel level of the explosion was over 300db. The pressure wave that it generated circled the globe more than three times. Anyone remember the 1968 film, Krakatoa, East of Java? There were some Hollywood luminaries in it such as, Maximillian Schell, Brian Keith, and Sal Mineo, it garnered one Academy Award for Special Effects but don’t go rushing to Netflix because after that, it was unremarkable. But it did have the eruption of Krakatoa as a main theme and that is our present subject.

                             For all of you teachers out there, or relatives thereof, a wonderful book was written in 1947 by William Pene Du Bois entitled, The Twenty-One Balloons. It received the 1948 Newberry Award and that is all that needs to be said to give it credence! Anyway, it is the story of 20 families that live on the island and mine diamonds.

A lot of diamonds!

 They periodically leave the island with just enough diamonds to get rich without crashing the diamond market. They know that someday the island will blow its top, so they have an invention of sorts, it is ring of 20 balloons that when danger is imminent, they inflate them, and all 20 families soar high into the atmosphere and escape.  When they are safely away the balloons disengage from each other and the families go their separate ways, wherever the winds may take them. I will leave how the 21^st balloon got involved to your reading pleasure!

It’s a great story…. buy it for your grandkids!

                                      The End.

Enough about Krakatoa and the region. But ever since reading that book back in 1966 in Sixth Grade, this area of the world (and Krakatoa!) have been favorites of mine. Unfortunately, I do not think that our course will bring us near enough to see Krakatoa’s offspring, Anak Krakatoa, which first appeared in 1927 and subsequently has had several eruptions and has triggered a deadly tsunami in December of 2018.

                   But…..  tomorrow we are going to a Captain’s Reception for the Platinum and Elite levels of Princess passengers where the Captain and the Senior Officers will be present… So, who knows! 😊

                   On to Singapore!