Memoirs of a Worker

Artifacts, Spiders and Snakes

This part comes to you from Winnie, Texas which is down on the gulf coast where I've been working all week. Please remember to click on the star and to share with your friends and families.

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During my time as a U.S. embassy contract employee, I ended up working in the Central American country of Belize, on three different occasions. Wow what a place! I instantly fell in love with the country and the people I met treated me awesome. At that time the embassy was in Belize City (it has since moved to Belmopan), and even though Belize City isn’t the nicest city in the world, I had no problems with anyone I met.

Ever since I can remember, I have had a fascination with Mayan ruins. When I was younger I read books about the ancient Maya, and what some of the great explorers endured to find “lost cities.” So when I got my assignments to go to Belize, I was elated.

George was one of the local people who worked at the embassy and he and I became friends. I told him of my desire to find a “lost city” of the Maya and he laughed. “You don’t have to go very far to find things like that, just come out to my property tonight after work and I’ll show you.”

I could hardly wait for work to end that day. Earlier, George had given me a map to his place out in the jungle. I followed the map, and only got lost a couple of times. He had 20 acres that his grandmother had willed to him. George clear-cut 10 of those acres and then planted that to fruit trees; banana, papaya, mango, pineapple, oranges, grapefruit, and the like, and he left the other 10 acres in jungle.

I followed George through his little piece of heaven and then he pointed and said, “This is an ancient Mayan well. I found it after I cleared out the jungle.” I was impressed; he even used that well to water his fruit trees during the dry season. We walked farther and then George said, “If you want to find something, this would be a good place to dig.”

“What makes this a good place to dig?” I said as I gazed around looking at the trees and terrain, not knowing exactly what to look for.

George bent down and pulled a piece of broken pottery out of the dirt. My eyes about bugged out of my head!

I came back for several days with a shovel, and started to dig. I screened the dirt and found handfuls of pottery shards. In fact I filled a few sacks full of broken pottery, from dozens of different vessels. There were pieces of pitchers, plates, bowels and other pieces that I had no idea what they had been in their prime. There were black pieces, some a red orange color and others had some type of writing on them. At night in my hotel room, I tried fitting and gluing the pieces back together. With all the different pieces it was like several giant jigsaw puzzles all thrown in the same bag. In the end I managed to fit a few pieces of the puzzles together.

I arrived early one Saturday morning and started to dig in earnest. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was digging for, but it was exciting and so I dug. By midafternoon I stood in a hole that was at least four feet deep with very straight sides and a diameter of about eight feet. At this depth the broken pieces of pottery had become almost nonexistent. I wiped the sweat from my brow and leaned against the side of my excavation. The thought occurred to me that where I was digging could have been a garbage pit. Perhaps that was why there were hundreds of pieces of broken pottery of all kinds and all shapes.

I had about decided to call it a day when my foot caught on a rock and I tripped and all but fell. Irritated, I wrapped my hand around the good sized rock and tossed it out of the hole. To my astonishment a huge spider sprang from under the rock the moment I picked it up! The spider was between four and five inches across and was upset that the rock that had been its cover, was now gone. I knew this by the way the spider chased me around and around inside that hole! I had made the sides so steep that it was difficult to climb out fast enough without the spider getting me.

I’ve never actually been a fan of really big spiders, (or any spiders for that matter) especially one that kept chasing after me! This one didn’t play by the rules either. Instead of trailing after me, he sometimes cut across on the diagonal, trying to more or less “cut me off at the pass.”

On one of my trips around the hole I caught a glimpse of a broken, leafy branch about 5 feet long within reaching distance of the hole. On my third or fourth lap around the dig site, I managed to grab hold of the branch and flip it around until the end of the branch landed in the hole right in front of the spider. The spider stopped, and then in an instant sprang onto the branch and darted in and out of the side shoots in an attempt to reach my hand.

My whirlwind like reflexes being what they were, found the spider airborne, for a good 100 feet or better! “Whew, that was close!” I said out loud. Generally I’m a rather cool, calm, collected type of guy, but that spider made my heart race! 

My foot caught on one more rock. I contemplated moving that rock for a long time. Things like, “How could that spider be living 4 feet in the ground under a rock?” crept into my mind. After much trepidation, I bent down and lifted the next rock out of the way, but I made sure the stick was close by. To my relief there was no spider, but there was a black hole about 6 inches in diameter with an unknown depth.

My heart skipped a beat. “I’m in something. I don’t know what, but whatever it is, this is pretty cool,” I thought. For some reason, I looked around to make sure I was alone when I discovered my treasures. (I had seen enough movies to know this was the thing treasure hunters do since there always seems to be someone lurking in the shadows just ready to pounce and plunder the cache). When I found that I was indeed alone, I dropped to my knees, took a deep breath and inserted my arm!

I envisioned my fingers landing on casks of gold, knives, shields; you know…the usual things you find in a treasure trove. I dropped down farther and introduced my arm all the way to my shoulder and grubbed around hoping my fingers would touch the treasures.

At the precise moment I did this, the movie “Indiana Jones” came into my mind. I don’t know why that happened. I hadn’t even thought about Indiana Jones for years, and all of a sudden I pictured him in the Egyptian tomb in vivid detail (and color), when all those snakes started coming through the walls straight for him.

My arm quit probing about, while I contemplated the situation. “That spider had to have lived somewhere. What if this hole is infected with spiders, and snakes!” My arm shot out of that hole like greased lightning! Indiana Jones and I are a lot alike, ok, well sort of, in that neither of us likes snakes.

I placed the rock back over the hole and removed myself from the area. I can and have dealt with a lot of things. For instance, being chased by a huge, irate crocodile in Lilongwe, Malawi; dodging bullets during a gun battle in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia during their civil war; being held at gunpoint in Khartoum, Sudan. But snakes…I don’t think so!

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I hope you enjoyed this. When treasure hunting it's probably best not to shove your hand into a deep, dark hole! I got transfered shortly after this incident so I never got to go back. If you like these stories, press the follow button so you'll know when I update and feel free to share them. Lloyd