It was a typical Amazon evening – full of rich silence and calm. Under the cover of darkness some blood chilling scenes were taking place. I was just about to go to sleep. As I always do, I checked if my shelter had not been attacked by termites, fire ants, or other animals. I closed my backpack, so that it would not be settled at night by cockroaches, scorpions, or snakes. I put it on a simple shelf made from branches, hoping that all kinds of crawling creatures would not have an easy access to it. As usual, I took a torch with me and finally I closed my eyes and drifted into the land of dreams.

I woke up suddenly in the middle of the night. I knew that apart from me there was someone else inside the hut. I felt someone’s careful breath in the air, I heard dust particles moved by someone’s soft feet, and then I heard a sudden, penetrating silence. When I opened my eyes, the mysterious guest stood still. It must have heard the rustling of my eyelids. I smelled the scent of his fear inside the hut. We both knew about each other’s presence and we assumed the same tactics – waiting.

There was another option – to spring to my feet, blinding the assailant by the light of the torch and launching an attack using a randomly chosen tool. However, without knowing the enemy, it would be difficult to choose a proper weapon. Moreover, if the uninvited guest proved to be an animal its counterattack would be instinctive and carried out at the speed of lightning and at the same time the set of its protective tools was hard to predict – starting from plain and poisonous fangs, through claws and talons that tear the body apart, to stingers with a paralysing toxin.

And so I chose to lie down in the darkness waiting for another move of my mysterious guest. And he was waiting, too.

Finally I fell asleep. I woke up as suddenly as I had done before and because of the same reason. The situation had not changed in any way whatsoever. It was still the deep, black, Amazon night, I was lying with my eyes wide open in an Indian hut in which, apart from me, there was some kind of strange creature.

I woke up three times before daybreak and each time I could sense a close presence of the alien, who would freeze to the spot, although the only gesture I made, was opening my eyes.

The mystery was solved in the morning.

I found paw tracks on the ground and in the middle of my backpack there was a huge, gaping hole. In the first moment I thought it was just a dream. Good backpacks – and mine was just like that – are made from thick tarpaulin, which is resistant to humidity, pulling on the ground, throwing, and any attempts to cut it. However, the producers had not predicted the chance of contact with the sharpest teeth in the world, which are present in the mouth of one Amazonian animal.

The hardest thing that exists in the jungle is the fruit of the Brazil nut. It resembles a brown cannonball with a tasty, large seeds inside. They are oblong, ivory colour and their taste reminds me of sweet almonds. However, in order to get to them, first you have to break the shell, which is so tough that it doesn’t even break after falling off a tree top, fifty meters above ground. The shell is almost 1.5 centimetres thick and it is impossible to break it with a hammer or cut it with a saw blade – which can be achieved in the case of a coconut. And so it could seem that the seeds will remain forever inside a heavy ball, which would not be good neither for the tree nor the people. Luckily, in the same Brazilian jungle there lives a small rodent with a smooth, olive and brown fur and a slender head, in which fits a set of incredibly sharp and strong teeth.

The animal’s name is agouti and it is only slightly bigger than a squirrel. It really enjoys eating fresh fruit and vegetables and sometimes it even creeps up onto the plots where the Indians grow cassava and bananas. But when it finds a ripe, brown ball, hard as a rock, it simply grabs it and bites a round hole in it, grabbing the Brazil nuts from inside.

There is another animal living in the Amazon wilderness that is equipped in the same incredible way by nature – the opossum, which belongs to the marsupial family. The opossum looks like a very big rat, and that was the animal that paid me a visit that night. Most probably it smelled something suitable for eating inside my backpack, and immediately started to get it out. I think the task was not easy, but it ended with a success. Unfortunately, my backpack was not fit for any other journey any more.

From this story comes the first lesson related to your luggage: never leave anything edible inside your backpack. Animals possess an incredible sense of smell and some of them also have unbelievably sharp teeth.

Translated by Michał Nowakowski

In the Still of the Amazon Night - excerpt from the book "THE GLOBETROTTER'S GUIDE, or The Travelling Blonde", published by National Geographic Poland 2008

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