We live in a house in a small compound in South Jakarta. There are approximately forty townhouses in this compound which ring around a central garden and swimming pool area, which contain several decorative fish and lily ponds.
Behind the compound is a small stream and narrow strip of jungle. About half of the houses in the compound are rented out, and the rest are vacant. Ours´ is an international community. American, Australian, German, Japanese, Chinese, New Zealand and Korean families all live here. It is quite a pleasant place. But we have heard rumors that the complex’s owners want to tear the complex down and build a high rise. They were prevented from doing so several years ago by some of our Indonesian neighbors who live in the large single family homes along the next block. These are the well connected and influential people who did not want to put up with the new construction and a huge apartment tower in their neighborhood. I think the principal opponent of the construction was this former police general who owned the largest taxi cab and bus company in Jakarta. Unfortunately he died in November and the compound owners are now making noises again about knocking the townhouses down.
I mention this because many years ago I lived in a building that the owners wanted to sell, but they did not want to have to deal with the tenants of the building and the complex Landlord Tenant laws which favored tenant ownership. As a result, they wanted the tenants to move out so they could sell the building vacant. A vacant building is worth more than one fully tenanted in Washington DC. In order to induce the tenants to move out, the owners started to let the building deteriorate. And so the owners opened the portals of the building to all of the city’s diverse wildlife. Most notably rats. I was young and still in my twenties at the time, so I could deal with a lot of things. And one thing I helped do was form a tenant organization. The other thing I started was a rat patrol. At the time I had two dogs living with me in my apartment and I would take the dogs to the basement or to this inner courtyard in the building to hunt and kill rats. And my dogs were very successful. But one day as I was taking the dogs out for a walk, Molly (one of my dogs) became very interested in one of the couches in the foyer of the building. The building was a marvelous beaux arts building with a huge foyer with an ornate vaulted ceilings. It was a wonderful place to hang out and talk to our neighbors (this was a time when we still talked to our neighbors). In any event, Molly started sniffing around the couch, then jumped up on top of it and started to dig. She then stuck her snout deep into the folds of the cushions and came up about a minute later with a huge rat in her jaws. We subsequently called the housing inspector, the Landlord was fined, and the building was exterminated. The next thing we had to battle, which no exterminator could ever fully eradicate was the cockroaches.
I mentioned this because I was reminded of the 1st world city wildlife adventures and had to contrast them to the 3rd world wildlife adventures we often encounter while living here in Jakarata. Although Jakarta has its share of rats and cockroaches, these are not the night crawlers who come to visit our Jakarta home.
This morning when our driver (yes you must have a driver in Jakarta because the traffic is impossible and parking non existent) came to take Miles and me to Miles’ school, he had a close encounter of the wild kind in our garage. He had just unlocked the car and gotten in when he heard a rattling or rustling noise in the garage. He didn’t see anything and at first thought it was a hantu degin tenagatenaga gaib ( a spirit with magical powers—yes we do have at least one ghost spirit in this house) but then he heard it again and saw something scurry out of the garage. It caused him quite a fright for he ran up and rang our doorbell. I was upstairs so Irene answered the door and came outside to see what was the matter, and she too saw something scurry out the garage and run under another parked car. I came downstairs and was told there was a huge lizard hiding under the car. But when I looked I saw nothing. Our driver thought it was a small crocodile at first, but then after discussing it with Irene and the driver of the other vehicle (who also described it as a crocodile) subsequently thought it might have been a monitor lizard.
Word quickly spread in the compound and the security guards at the front gate came around searching for the lizard, for they had hopes of capturing it and selling it to a Chinese vendor for Rp. 500,000. ($55.00). Miles and I went beating around the bushes ourselves. We had been having an ongoing discussion for a week or so about the best type of pet, and this morning we both decided a big lizard would make a pretty cool pet. Fortunately for the lizard no one could qualify for the Crocodile Dundee award. So I will not be constructing a huge terrarium in our back yard and some Chinese vendor will only have dried herbs to sell this week. However, I know that there was something in our garage all day yesterday because I could see the evidence of his past lunch.
However, I do not think our visitor was a crocodile sent by the complex’s owners to drive us from house and home, because this was not the first time we have had a bit of the wild come to visit us. A couple of months after we first moved in we had a civet cat (or at least I believe it was a civet cat- although I never got a good look at it) camp out on our front balcony for a couple of weeks. It would come up late at night wherein it would snack on fruit it had snagged off the trees in our compound and then use the bathroom facilities in the corner of the balcony. Unfortunately there were no facilities in the corner of the balcony, but that didn’t stop the civet cat. And so, much against my own personal wishes, I had to make my presence known to the cat so that it would cease its nocturnal visits. Personally I had other plans for the cat. Yes I know that some people try to make pets out of them, but I was thinking more in terms of gustable friendship.
No, I did not want to eat this cat. Rather, keep in mind that Indonesia produces the most expensive coffee in the world. It sells locally between $40-$80 for 200 grams and in America for about $150-$300 per pound. It is Kopi Luwak.
A special coffee from a bean that has been first processed by a civet cat, then washed, then roasted. The coffee berry (a coffee berry is the fruit of the coffee tree, the berry contains a seed (or bean) which is then dried, roasted and then ground to make our day worthwhile) is processed in the same manner by the civet cat as the very cat who processed the fruit he dragged up onto our balcony. Only instead of leaving behind undigestable fruit shells and hulks, what the civet leaves behind from the berry is the bean (and I mean behind quite literally in all senses of the word). When I realized I did not have a ready supply of coffee berries on hand, I sort of lost interest in my home brewed kopi luwak project. So I stayed up late a couple of nights and scared the civet away with a bright light and thereafter we had a clean balcony.
We do have other wildlife in our midst. Most notably our cicaks which are like small geckos who live in our house and help keep our fly and ant population to a minimum. When we first moved in I would often be startled in the morning when I would wander down into the kitchen or bathroom, turn on a light and see a small lizard scurry away. But now they are just part of the household. They are really wonderful little creatures for they truly do manage the other household pests (flies and ants) and never leave evidence of their management techniques. Besides they are kind of cute. Think Geico Insurance. Also in the compound we have a couple dozen wild cats who maintain the mouse, shrew and snake populations. And of course there is a vast array of birds, small bats and squirrels, but they never enter the home (though I have not been up into the crawl space between roof and ceiling so I most qualify that last statement). However, I am often reminded of how not too far from the jungle Jakarta really is less by the wildlife but more by the people themselves. There are many street markets in the city, not far from where we live, where live chickens, rabbits and other animals can be purchased for meat. During Lebaran week celebrating the end of the Ramadan fast, thousands of goats are brought into the city for sale and slaughter. On the street corner, a few blocks from our house I passed a man standing on the corner trying to sell a huge owl strapped to his arm. Frequently I will see guys walking along a busy city street carrying very long poles. The poles have a small cloth net attached to the end of the pole which these guys then use to try to trap or grab some small animal from a city tree. I don’t know what they catch, for I have only seen them either poking around in the tree at something hidden, or else I have seen something wriggling around in the net with the pole slung across their shoulder. One time I saw a guy on a motorcycle passing us on the street. Strapped to the back of the motorcycle was a hooded hawk. We are definitely not in Kansas anymore, which is a good thing since I understand Kansas is socked in with a huge snowstorm dumping 2-3 inches per hour.
Oops, got to go, the swimming pool beckons and snow is a distant memory. I just have to look out for the crocodiles. Oh, and the pictures of wildlife are stock images, not mine unfortunately.
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