As our motley convoy—Bob, Kolya, Alek, the two Arams, Levon, Jingo, the human-sized bulldog, and myself—aimed south for a forest reserve on Armenia’s Iranian frontier, time unwound down every valley: animals roamed untended, beekeepers slept in meadows with their swarms, and haymakers from a Brueghel painting wandered the road with hand-hewn tools.
In a canyon hemmed by crenulated rock towers, we debarked for a reconnaissance hike to a ridge where Alek had seen endangered Armenian vipers in the spring—an almost senseless act given the 42˚C midday heat. Casually dressed to this point, Alek now donned Rambo-esque camo accessorized with a headscarf, wristbands, army boots, and a tool belt festooned with snake tongs, knife, and compass. Aping paterfamilias Aram No. 1, Levon’s preparation consisted of lighting another cigarette.
The footing was near-impossible on the steep talus of ankle-battering, dinner-plate slabs we scrambled up; even side-hilling to lessen the angle was like walking diagonally across a sloping roof whose tiles occasionally shot from underfoot. After several hours we gained a rocky ridge with dizzying views across the valley to where, like a tilted wedding cake, cliff-layers angled into the icing of afternoon thermals.
Having found nothing to this point, Alek called a halt. Grateful for respite, Levon and I dove behind the largest boulders, him sparking another smoke while I greedily downed water. Sipping contemplatively from his own canteen, Alek mopped his brow, put his back to a rock, and pulled binoculars to his face. Though he looked to be scanning for enemy combatants, he was actually searching for… well, anything alive. Scrutinizing the landscape with Google Earth precision, Alek confirmed that the only animals foolish enough to be out in this heat were humans, eliciting evident disappointment. Resignedly, we’d begun descending through a walnut-shaded gully when Alek suddenly leaned over to pluck something up. He quickly turned to reveal thumb and forefinger pinching the thorax of a gangly, hand-sized arthropod. I fully expected a tarantula, but instead of eight beady little eyes embedded in a hairy head were two multifaceted orbs and the frantic, akimbo antennae of a smooth-faced… what?
Where there should have been nasty, fanglike chelicerae I saw only sharp, chitinous mandibles hanging open like wire cutters. “Saga pedo,” smiled Rambo triumphantly, presciently answering my next question, “Like grasshopper… but eet lizard.”
The predatory bush cricket—as it was more regularly known—represented a carnivorous branch of grasshopperdom that looked like a large ground spider and hunted like one, too. There was little doubt that if held improperly, it would inflict a painful bite. Sadly, the serendipity of seeing this unique creature was tempered by news that it was on its last spine-addled legs; unchecked grazing—the same responsible for steep declines in Armenia’s vipers—had also placed Saga pedo on the red-list across its Central Asian range.
Early that evening, we’d finally arrived in Shikahogh State Forest Reserve, debarking into some unused barracks. The fact that the room soon smelled of fresh blood might have come from the pork the Arams were chopping on the concrete floor, but more likely the exsanguinations of a dogfight that Jackson Pollocked crimson arcs across the walls.
The Arams had been prepping a banquet for their friend, the park director, when, for reasons unknown, No. 1 unleashed Jingo from his heavy chain. When the director strolled in with arms outstretched in welcome, the tall, scrappy mutt by his side had immediately seen the back end of Jingo, an obvious intruder, and lunged for him with lips curled. Though I’d yet to see Jingo do anything more aggressive than lick his oddly conspicuous balls, the slugabed bulldog spun, ninja-like, vacuuming the attacking dog’s neck into his jaws and snapping them shut to a gut-wrenching cry. The room transformed instantly into a red chaos of dog, human, gear, meat and produce. Jingo held tight, shaking the larger beast like a cheerleader’s pom-pom. Even with teams pulling the bleeding canids apart while beating them with heavy sticks, the mess took five snarling minutes to disentangle. But the tussle was quickly forgotten as we got down to the business of banqueting.
Although this would be the largest yet, the several feasts we’d already survived unfolded similarly: Bob funnelled money through his bagman, Kolya, to Aram No. 1, who’d disappear on a long, looping mission through the countryside to purchase food and booze; womenfolk gathered to prepare breads, sour cheeses, dried meat, and pickles while the men huffed cigarettes around a fire pit and roasted eggplant, tomatoes, peppers and any available flesh on heavy skewers called khorovatz; the table was then loaded with overlapping plates stacked atop each other, any empty spaces filled with bottles of vodka, beer, and wine; the women withdrew with their food to a safe distance while the men ate more slowly, liberally sprinkling the proceedings with eye-crossing toasts; as things wound down and blindness overcame the lurching, singing males, a bottle of homemade hooch invariably appeared and total annihilation was achieved.
On this occasion, Aram No. 1, smoking and peeling a bag of Sevan crayfish (where did they come from?) between toasts, fired off three salutes in a row, each a mini-opera followed by a shot. The subjects, as far as I could tell, were snakes for being snakes, Bob for being Bob (fair symmetry), and Aram’s 30-year friendship with Kolya.
Then everything went black.
For Parts 1 and 2 of the Armenian viper caper, see piquenewsmagazine.com, Aug. 2 and Aug. 15. Pick up the Sept. 10 edition for the final instalment.
Leslie Anthony is a Whistler-based author, editor, biologist and bon vivant who has never met a mountain he didn’t like.