Welcome to the jungle
We take it day by day
If you want it you're gonna bleed
But it's the price you pay

--Axl Rose (or some unknown song-writer), Welcome to the Jungle, 1987

I'm quoting Axl Rose because I'm certain that no one else would, now that he's a certified has-been, all washed up in his Malibu (or Miami, whichever) mansion trying to make a comeback with only the spare tire around his middle to accompany him. Slash is gone, Izzy disappeared, the racy-looking girls have vanished, the 80's are now retro and I'm feeling every year of being 30. I remember thinking that guy was so hot/cool/beautiful, I'm positive I cried during the Sweet Child O' Mine video many times. Whatever.

My boyfriend CK and I just spent four days in the Malaysian jungle and I'm sure that I've unintentionally taught the birds to whistle the tune of "Welcome to the Jungle" due to the number of times I hummed it while waiting for monkeys to swing by. The prevalent rumor about Taman Negara National Park in central Malaysia is that although elephants, tigers, bears and rhinos live in the park, visitors won't see any of them because the park is too big and the animals are too bashful. CK and I found this to be completely false. We sat diligently in a hide, which is basically an elevated tree-house, overlooking a salt lick, for hours at a time, the only sound being the creak of our out-of-shape necks to comfort us. We saw mouse-deer (head of a mouse, body of a tiny deer, legs of a mouse-cousin of the mid-western jack-a-lope), Silver-leaf monkeys, Macaques, flying squirrels, Hornbills and a big red-tailed pheasant.

Some of the more unsavory creatures we endured were giant red ants, rabbit-sized mosquitoes and leeches. I was having a wonderful time trekking through the jungle, listening to the sounds and smelling the scents until one leech crawled onto my sock and suddenly the world seemed a horrible place. I am considering leech-desensitization therapy because of the twist of my demeanor pre-to-post-leech incident. Before the leech incident, I was a happy, worry-free jungle-lover, taking in the sights and sounds of beetles, birds, monkeys and unseen mammals crawling through the forest floor. After the leech incident, I became jumpy and alert, given to wild fits of ripping off my socks and shoes, searching for the blood-sucking villains, not knowing what I would I would do, besides hyperventilate, if I found any. CK, serving as my makeshift therapist, had to endure endless questioning sessions about what would happen if thousands of leeches had actually attacked me. Where would he start? How would he kill them all? What would he do with my lifeless body? I know leeches are not dangerous, and if I'm going to fret about anything in the jungle it should be the assortment of life-threatening snakes that dwell there. But for some reason the idea of leeches, and the prevalence of them, the way they crawl, the way they suck blood and then get all fat and happy and start looking for another leech to hump, makes my skin crawl.

I don't want to suggest that the jungle is only about mud-dwelling, blood-sucking, mate-humping leeches so I will leave you with the highlight of our jungle visit: witnessing an entire family of wild pigs foraging for food. We heard them squealing long before we saw them. They finally emerged from the dense underbrush, looking stark in the man-made clearing, and seeming a lot smaller than they sounded. They completely avoided the salt-lick but we got to watch them as they grunted their way around the underbrush, looking for dead leaves or truffles or whatever it is that wild pigs eat.

One final warning for all you snake-haters: it's pretty well-publicized that the jungle is abundantly stocked with deadly snakes. What they don't tell you is that the roots of the trees all look exactly like our slithery enemies, so that at first, every step you take you must decide, is that a snake or is it a root? Snake or root, root or snake, etc. After a few minutes one gets used to it. I'm not even a true snake-hater, but it was touch and go at first.

Despite snake-looking roots and leeches, the jungle is an extraordinary place. I highly recommend going to one whenever you can, just to listen to the sounds of birds, monkeys, pigs, beetles and other wild creatures. And of course, as we are all well aware, the world's jungles are disappearing at an alarming rate. We could practically hear the jungle shrinking, almost as fast as poor Axl's career.