The house at Thung Tieo , in which I have lived intermittently for the past five years is constructed of hand-hewn timber with woven bamboo sheeting for is walls. The roof is thatched with “jaak”. These are woven tiles, actually made not from the fronds of the rattan, “waay jaak” ( Daemonorops grandis ), from which they take their name, but from the broader fronds of another palm, “sakhuu” (Genus Metroxylon ), which is found is some of the marshy hollows in adjacent villages. “Sakhuu” is a more durable roofing material then “waay jaak”, but even so my roof still has to be re-tiled every two to three years thanks to the numerous small weevils who munch their way through it. I buy a new supply from a house in a nearly village for whom making palm-thatch roof tiles is a regular and quite lucrative, cottage industry. These days, each tile made of “sakhuu” costs about Bht.7-10.

The floor has alternated between being constructed of strips of bamboo, and the wood of the beautiful palm Oncosperma (known locally as “lao-cha-on”). I actually prefer the rather more flexible slats of bamboo to the more rigid Oncosperma wood for sleeping on. In addition, bamboo seems to last longer: the Oncosperma slats, in spite of their hardness, are chewed upon, and ultimately destroyed, by the legions of termites which climb up the stilts of my house from the forest floor.

As you can see , my house is merely anther component of the forest ecosystem. At dusk, bats fly in one door and out the other, doing a circuit overhead to gobble up any small flying insects attracted to the neon striplight overhead, Besides the inevitable House Geckos “jingjoks” which lurk underneath the table, surfacing after dark to gobble up the odd rice gain or other small scraps of food, are other reptilian denizens. A Tockay Gecko, for all the world like a cartoon dragon with his grey-green hide, spotted with orange tubercles, lives up among the overhead beams.

My roof is also on the regular foraging route of a one-metre plus long snake, a red-tailed racer Gonyosoma oxycephalum who visits the house to hunt rats. I usually catch sight of him gliding along a beam before he disappears into the thatch. After a few minutes, there is usually some scuffling and squeaking as panic-stricken rats are displaced, but I've never been lucky enough to see him catch one of them. He's a beautiful creature: emerald green above, yellower below, with a striking black stripe through his eye. I seem to think this snake is venomous, whereas according to my reference books it is non-venomous.

Once , I was fortunate enough to witness an encounter between the racer and the tockay. As the snake moved along the upperside of a beam, the tockay sidled around unobserved to cling to the underside. I thought that the tockay was avoiding the snake, but this was not so. As the snake moved past the tockay, the tockay then began to stalk the snake from below and behind. When the snake stopped moving, the tockay reached up and bit him the abdomen, causing the snake to flee. The tockay's aggressive reputation is evidently well-earned.

We throw our kitchen scraps out of the back door, where they become food for one of the three Water Monitors who come to scavenge regularly. I once saw a second monitor species, the rather more arboreal Bengal Monitor, outside the house. He climbed up to investigate the cavity of a standing dead tree.

Unknown to the monitor , though, the cavity was already inhabited by a Black Flying Squirrel. The squirrel belied its reputation as a shy, retiring animal. No sooner had the monitor hesitantly pushed his snout into the entrance when the normally nocturnal squirrel came bursting out to see the monitor off! This was at ten o'clock in the morning – the only time I have seen a flying squirrel in daylight!

When you add to these the two species of Calotes tree-lizards, plus the flying lizards, not to mention the occasional Paradise Tree-Snake and Malayan Pit-Viper, all in and around the house-yard, it seems to me that many days go by when I see far more reptiles than birds! Who said the age of reptiles was over?

Philip D. Round
October 1995