I'm at a sort of hotel, as if I've stopped for the night while leading a mountain climbing group. I think it's early morning, and I'm having breakfast out on a terrace. It's a dry and dusty red place.

Suddenly this strange creature scampers up near me, and then darts away. It is about 18 inches long and articulated, rather like a christmas cactus, like nothing I've never seen before.

I get out my camera to take a picture of it, but it is too fast. It keeps coming back to this small pile of leaves, perhaps holly leaves, grabbing one leaf, and then running far away and stashing it somewhere. It seems really clever and intentional in its actions. For some reason I think the leaves change, like we changed the pile or it ran out, and it switches to grabbing some other leaves. But it is very focused on those particular leaves. And I'm very frustrated trying to photograph it. At some point it comes right up almost touching me, but when I tell somebody about it they tell me that it is very dangerous. It has these two horns on its head that can dispense a deadly poison, and I was lucky not to have been killed by it. It seemed pretty friendly to me.