Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: CHARGE (10/13/22)
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TITLE: 600 volts | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jack Taylor
10/20/22 -
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“Did you see it?” my Quechua friend said pointing into the pool. He handed me a piece of Ch’arki – llama jerky. “Hold this and stick it right at the surface of the water.”
Trusting his instruction, I first tore off a chunk with my teeth and extended the rest toward the shape in the water. Before I could react, the shape shot out of the water and zapped me. I fell back on the bank shrieking. My friend rolled into a belly laugh.
“What was that?” I yelled.
He knelt down beside the pool and snatched up the shadowy shape. Out came a wriggling eel-like fish, flat-headed, greying on top and yellow underneath. It’s really a knifefish. The body of the aquatic terror was fully as long as my friend and it was determined to have its way. It wasn’t a snake but it wriggled like one.
As a missionary naturalist, I knew that the electric eel had 6000 cells ready to release its 600-volt charge in unison. A significant charge could shock a man enough to drop him into the water where he could drown. While the fish’s poor eyesight may not have distinguished my hand from a local mammal or bird the low-level charge given off acted like a radar to help it navigate and find prey. While instant death from a single charge is rare, multiple shocks can result in respiratory or heart failure. A swarm of electric eels can do serious damage.
“What were you thinking?” I asked, backing away from my grinning friend. “I could have died.”
“Not today,” my friend said, scanning his trophy. With a shrug he tossed it back into the water and we watched it knife back into the murky darkness. “He’s almost twenty years old.”
These were the waters near where five missionaries-Jim Elliot, Ed McCully, Peter Fleming, Nate Saint and Roger Youderian-were speared to death by a group of Huaorani warriors in 1956. That was the day I was born and from the time I’d heard about their sacrifice I had determined to explore this tropical paradise. I’d been given a charge by God similar to theirs but so much had changed in the land and among the people.
Had the missionaries encountered the great-grandfather of this eel that zapped me? I was intrigued at how God’s creative touch resulted in such diverse life forms. I hadn’t always believed. I saw the story of the martyrs in a library as a teen and the date of their deaths hit me hard. I knew that the message they were carrying to unreached people had to be significant. Because of their obedience to a charge long ago I responded to their message long after their death. In my first visits to Ecuador as a young biologist I found out that others had also responded to their message.
This was actually my second trip to the lower Amazon basin. On my first trip at the end of the dry season my friend had shown me a bubble nest built by a male electric eel. “More than a thousand babies will come from that nest when it rains again,” he said. “Don’t try to put your hand into that nest or the daddy will zap you.”
I was determined to come back in the rainy season to see what had happened to this nest. Now I knew. “This daddy is like my heavenly daddy,” I told my friend. “He knows how to build his communities of new life and he knows how to guard those new little ones. Sometimes he allows a few to die but he is always working to bring new life.”
My Quechua friend pursed his lips and stared hard into the murky waters where the electric eel had blended into the muck. “You come all this way to remind me of what others have already said.” He turned back toward the trail we had taken. “We know there is one trail to get to where we need to go. We cannot walk it alone. We must build bubble nests of life.”
I nodded and smiled.
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