Believe it, yo.

     I'm not exactly sure what I was doing ankle deep in that soggy grass field. 

     The peacock had gone silent. He stood tall and narrow, perched elegantly on the tiniest branch of one Tim Burton-esque tree that was at least a football field's length from the back road. The zoom lens was useless from this far out. And standing halfway between me and that bird was one chocolate brown bull on one really long leash and one King Cobra horror story, still quite fresh in my mind.

     Amit urged me forward. No need to worry about snakes now that it was raining, he explained. The bull was equally harmless. I trusted the guy. But by the time I had reached the bull Amit was gone. His own bull, Mario, who'd been standing by himself in a similar field since morning, would need to be fed some dry grass. Puji would be my eyes and ears now. She glanced out worriedly from underneath her umbrella and asked if she should come along. No need, I called back. I passed the bull without incident. He looked gentle enough. I kept snapping every twenty soggy steps or so but the peacock was still too far away. I finally reached the small hill. The tree loomed overhead. I thought I should snap one last time before making my final approach. Except the peacock decided enough was enough and flew away. And that was that.

     The bull was less permissive on the way back. He started toward me as if to intercept me, the way a righteous bouncer would to some guy wearing the wrong pair of shoes. It seemed so useless, what with all the empty space. Then he charged. It was just for a second but I ran straight back toward the hill. Puji yelled in the distance. This was another animal I barely understood. I thought I might be trapped there and contemplated who amongst us would be faster in full flight. I took a second, larger detour and this time I cleared him without further incident. 

     On the way back to relative civilization we met a local man who confirmed many of our suspicions. Yes, this was a great place to photograph dancing peacocks and, yes, there were plenty of snakes slithering through those fields. Harmless, the snakes were. But then he went into what sounded like an old village tall tale about one particularly vengeful female Cobra that had come back in the middle of the night to kill the man who had killed one of her babies. She had stalked him amongst all of his sleeping family members and sunk her fangs into his arm. I didn't know reptiles to be so passionate. The unlucky man, who was African and nearly six and a half feet tall, had succumb to the poisonous venom - despite his apparent super-human strength - when a doctor at the hospital had prematurely removed the tourniquet from his arm. 

    It was the kind of story you wanted to believe. But then it was getting harder and harder to figure out exactly who and what to believe in this crazy town.