Chapter 34
“Whoa... holy shit. Did you guys just see that?”
Han Root stared blankly at the monitor.
Inside the cave, the only sound was soft breathing.
After easily subduing the snake, Baby shoved the carcass into a corner as if nothing had happened.
Then it hopped back onto the bamboo bed.
Curled its body into a ball.
Sliiide.
It closed its eyes.
As if it had merely dealt with one annoying little pest.
Han Root stared at the screen in stunned silence.
“...What kind of lizard even is that?”
The safety staff had already thrown on raincoats and finished preparing to deploy.
A tense voice came over the radio.
-We’ve confirmed the contestants’ location and are moving out now!
Han Root fell silent for a moment, then picked up the radio again.
“...Uh.”
“...?”
“Situation resolved.”
“...Pardon?”
“Stand down and go back to resting.”
The safety staffer’s voice over the radio sounded strangely deflated.
-...Yes. Understood.
The chat erupted into chaos.
-Baby the GOAT...
-Holy shit LOL
-Is that really a lizard?
-That thing’s stupid strong
-Did you see it twist the snake’s neck?
-Baby officially confirmed as rank #1 in the Reels party
-Might be stronger than Kim Woong
-For real LOL Kim Woong can’t even build a shelter
-Baby <- solo-killed a snake
-No but it woke up, sensed something, and immediately squared up. That’s cool as hell
-Feels like some hidden master
-No lie, I just came, holy shit...
-Reels party guard dog (lizard) ㄷㄷ
-Is it normal that this makes me want to raise a lizard?
-How much do they cost roughly?
Han Root kept reading the chat until he finally let out a disbelieving laugh.
“That party’s pet lizard isn’t ordinary either.”
@
Day 6 on the deserted island.
The morning began with a scream.
“Aaaahhh!!! R-Re-Reels!”
“...Mmm.”
“Wh-what is that?!!”
My ears were killing me first thing in the morning.
I rubbed my eyes and slowly sat up.
Still half-asleep on the bamboo bed, I blankly turned my head.
Yerin was trembling as she pointed at the cave floor.
Her face was pale, like she’d seen a ghost.
What is it? Why’s she acting like that?
Yawning, I looked where she was pointing.
“...Oh!”
In the corner of the cave.
I spotted the limp carcass of a snake. Its neck was all mangled, as if something had bitten it to shreds.
But it looked strangely familiar.
This guy was that ungrateful snake that had tried to come at me when I was taking a piss.
Serves it right. Seriously.
If I’d run into it, I would’ve made snake wine out of it while it was still alive.
Lucky bastard!
I edged a little closer and examined the body.
“Hmm.”
Judging by how completely wrecked its neck was, it looked like it had fought something and been utterly crushed.
But.
No matter how I thought about it, a human couldn’t have done this.
It’s not like a human would’ve bitten a snake’s head apart with their teeth.
The only thing that could do something like this was...
I slowly turned my head.
And then.
My eyes met Baby, who was smacking the ground with its tail beside the corpse.
“...”
Baby looked triumphant.
Flick.
—Aren’t you going to praise me?
It had exactly that kind of face.
I walked over to Baby, looking full of confidence, and flicked it on the head.
Tap.
Kreeeng.
Baby’s eyes went round, like it thought this was terribly unfair.
“Baby.”
“...”
“You can’t do that.”
“...”
“What if you’d gotten hurt?”
A highly venomous snake would be dangerous even for Baby, a savannah monitor.
Fights in the wild are full of unpredictable variables.
Even with its tough scales, you never know what could happen to Baby.
“What if you’d gotten bitten? That could’ve been really bad.”
Baby drooped its tail with a sullen look.
Sigh.
Still, it was true that Baby had protected us while we were defenseless.
But from the perspective of a pet owner, worry comes before pride.
“Don’t ever do that again.”
I scratched under sulky Baby’s chin.
Grrr.
Baby quickly seemed to feel better, narrowing its eyes and rumbling low in its throat.
Yerin watched that in fascination, then said,
“...Isn’t that thing basically a person? It could go on TV or something.”
“Baby is a genius lizard.”
After cheering Baby up, I turned the snake carcass over again and checked its condition.
First, the shape of its head.
It didn’t have the wide, triangular shape typical of a venomous snake.
Its pupils were fairly round too.
Most importantly, it didn’t have venom fangs.
Venomous snakes usually have long, thick fangs in the front.
This one only had a dense row of ordinary teeth.
“That’s a relief.”
“...What is?”
“I don’t think it was venomous.”
“How can you tell?”
“You can roughly tell by the shape of the head and the teeth.”
Yerin stared at the snake carcass with a look of revulsion.
“...You’re not seriously thinking...?”
“We can eat it.”
“You’re seriously going to eat a snake?”
“My documentary guy said it tastes like chicken.”
“I don’t think I can trust that guy anymore....”
There are actually quite a lot of edible parts on a snake.
You see plenty of scenes in documentaries where people catch and eat snakes too.
In the first place, snakes are the most common animals you see in a humid jungle.
Kim Woong, who had been quietly watching, cautiously spoke up. Even with that build of his, he still seemed scared of Baby, calling out to me from a slight distance.
“Benefactor.”
“Yep.”
“Did Baby-nim really catch that snake?”
“Probably, yes.”
Using honorifics for a lizard.
Yeah, this guy wasn’t normal either.
Are all streamers just idiots or what?
Kim Woong looked at Baby with a reverent expression, then slowly bowed his head as though worshipping it.
“Thank you. Baby-nim was the one who protected us.”
“Grrr.”
Watching the ridiculous sight of a human greeting a lizard, a thought suddenly crossed my mind.
The fact that Baby’s rank kept rising was probably just my imagination, right?
@
The pet industry was suddenly thrown into chaos.
Ding.
Ding.
Ding.
The phone rang nonstop all day.
“Hello. This is Jungle Tail Reptile Adoption Center.”
“Excuse me! How smart are savannah monitors?!”
“Pardon...?”
“Do lizards really catch snakes?”
“Ah, well, that depends on the individual...”
“Are there smart lizards like Baby too?”
“No. That one is a special case...”
“Ah, okay. Then I’ll ask somewhere else.”
The employee set the receiver down with a blank expression.
And then, three seconds later.
Ding!
The phone rang again.
“Hello. Jungle Tail speaking.”
“Do savannah monitors understand human speech?”
“...They can be trained to a degree.”
“Then if I raise one like Reels does, can I sleep with it too?”
“That would probably be difficult...?”
The employee’s expression grew more and more haggard as they dealt with customer calls.
Jungle Tail’s CEO, Kang Do-yoon, was completely overwhelmed by the sudden situation.
“Hold on.”
“...”
“Why have inquiries about savannah monitor adoptions suddenly exploded?”
The employee answered, breaking into a cold sweat.
“Uh... it’s probably because of Mystery Rich’s deserted-island stream.”
“Mystery Rich? That big YouTuber?”
“Yes. One of the contestants has a pet lizard...”
“So what about it?”
“She brought her pet lizard to the deserted island. But now this savannah monitor named Baby has gotten insanely popular...”
After hearing that, Kang Do-yoon immediately searched up the clip on his smartphone.
A moment later.
“...Wow. Baby really is cool as hell.”
The moment he saw Baby bite into the snake’s neck inside the cave, then climb back onto the bed and go to sleep,
he too fell silent for a moment.
“This one is seriously unusual. It also seems a lot smarter than other lizards....”
Savannah monitors.
They weren’t an unpopular species to begin with.
The problem was that unless you were already interested in lizards, they weren’t a species a beginner could raise easily.
First of all, size was an issue.
If they grow well, they can get nearly as big as a medium-sized dog.
They eat a ton, too.
They’re omnivores, so they’ll eat just about anything.
But because they’re lizards, proper temperature and humidity control is absolutely essential.
If someone impulsively got one thinking, “Oh, how cute!” it could turn into a real disaster.
“...There are going to be a lot of people impulsively getting one after seeing the broadcast.”
The employee asked carefully.
“Should we put up a notice?”
“Post it right now.”
And a little later.
An emergency notice was posted on Jungle Tail’s official website.
[Notice Regarding Savannah Monitor Adoptions]
Savannah monitors are not a pet for beginners.
All pets require sufficient research before adoption.
‘Baby’ is a special individual, so you should not expect one like that.
@
“Ugh... how am I supposed to eat that?”
Yerin stared at the snake carcass with a horrified look.
I answered flatly.
“Yerin-nim, you said you wanted meat.”
“I-I mean, even so...”
“Otherwise we’ll have to go hungry until the rain stops.”
I pulled out the jungle knife and lightly nudged the snake’s head.
“I’ll cut off the head first. A snake’s nerves are concentrated in the head.”
“It’s definitely dead, right?”
“It’s dead.”
“It’s still scary, though. What if it suddenly moves?”
What a fuss over a snake.
When people go hungry, they do much scarier things than you’d think.
I’d heard a story somewhere before.
A ship had struck a reef and ended up wrecked.
They said only a few people were still alive when it was rescued.
I didn’t need to spell out how those people survived.
In extreme situations, humans don’t have the luxury to worry about dignity, ethics, or food preferences.
Every living creature puts survival instinct first.
I calmly cut off the snake’s head with the jungle knife.
Slice.
The severed head writhed on the floor.
“Eek!!”
“...”
“I-it’s alive!! I-it’s moving!!”
“It’s just a nerve reflex. They do that.”
Yerin looked genuinely horrified.
Kim Woong watched me from the side and nodded with a serious face.
“As expected of my benefactor.”
“...?”
“You never lose your composure, no matter the situation.”
No.
This really isn’t something worth hyping up that much.
After draining the snake’s blood and slicing open its belly with the jungle knife,
Squelch.
its innards spilled out.
The sight was gross, so I pushed it aside. Then I grabbed the snake’s skin with my hands and slowly peeled it off.
Riiiip.
It came off surprisingly easily.
It was satisfying enough that each strip almost gave me a weird little thrill.
Like it was weirdly addictive, like popping bubble wrap.
The look of the flesh underneath was fairly clean.
White and long, it looked a bit like chicken breast.
I washed the cleaned meat in water, cut it into chunks of a decent size, skewered them on branches, and set them right over the fire pit.
Sizzle.
Oil began to bubble up with a crackle, and a savory smell started spreading.
Yerin’s nose twitched.
“...Huh?”
“...?”
“Why does it smell okay?”
Human instinct really is honest.
When you’re hungry, even snake meat starts looking tasty, you know?
This morning’s menu.
Grilled snake meat it is!