TAMILOK, MULLETS, CRABS AND CLAMS
I have many vivid memories of the Maigo River. As a small kid I watched adults split waterlogged wood for tamilok. As soon as I can swing an ax I split my own wood. Tamilok is a clam that had outstretched itself. Two vestigial shells cover its front end. The soft, juicy and worm-like mollusk was eaten raw, dipped in a sauce of lemon juice and salt. I also ate the brackish water shipworm right after pulling them out of their abode, slurping the worms from one end like sotanghon. It was a long time ago.
I remember the time when the mullets and milkfish that swam at high tide were so big and plentiful to be fair games to people who used dynamites to fish. The numerous accidents that resulted in the loss of arms or even lives have not deterred people from blasting homemade nitrate explosives.
Another favorite target of the dynamiters then were the schools of tigue that entered the river at high tide. The Baelama anchovy were so plentiful that one blast could yield a mound of catch. As a kid, I used to gather leftover fish – those partly hidden in the sands or at the bottoms of rocks – when the bloated river had shrunk at low tide. As I grew older, I competed with adults in diving for milkfish and mullets, stunned or killed by the shock of dynamite blasts.
On the moist and shaded grounds of the riverbanks and coconut groves, I gathered uhong and libgos. These delicious mushrooms, which I thought were spawned by lightning and thunder, would miraculously sprout in multitude during the humid month of August. Uhong has long, thick stem and brownish umbrella-like fleshy cap. Libgos is a smaller variety of the edible fungi. Left in the field the mushrooms are feast for maggots, so I examined the stems and the underside of the caps and discarded the spoiled mushrooms. Wrapped in banana leaves and cooked over embers, this manna from heaven requires no spices except for a sprinkling of salt to make it a delicacy.
During the crab season, the upriver crabs take shelter at the bottom of big stones and in the holes and crevices in the riverbanks. There are two species of freshwater crabs – kamangkas and kalikis. Kamangkas is much bigger than the kalikis. It has big pincers and white underside. The crabs remain obscure and unperturbed in their natural habitat at the headwaters and tributaries of the river. The annual floods carry the crabs downstream. In the brackish water, the crabs mate, reproduce and die. In March, a long line of newly hatched crabs converge at the water edge as they swim en masse upstream to the river’s tributaries in the mountains – to grow, to mature and to complete the crustacean’s life cycle.
I enjoyed hunting freshwater crabs that took refuge in the holes of the cliffs. My left hand would expertly seek the crab in the holes and avoiding the crab’s large pincers, grasp it on the back and drag it out. If its big grasping claw caught my finger, I would keep still and suffer the pain until the crab slackens its grip. With heightened determination, I would repeat the process until the stubborn crab is secured inside the jute sack or tin can.
One of my cherished memories was panolo with my father on moonless nights. Night hunting was done during low tides, right after dusk or before dawn. Lighted by Petromax – a pressurized kerosene lamp – we hunted for shrimps, crabs and slow-moving fishes in the river, mangroves and the seashores nearby. I would excitedly peer at the shallow waters for quarry but dreaded the sight of tangkig, a water snake that crept on the riverbeds in their nocturnal search for prey. We left this harmless snake unharmed, mindful of its role in the river’s ecology, however modest. Talasak (mudskipper) were also left alone since they are too small as a catch and too fast to catch.
The tidal basins of the Maigo River are covered with luxuriant growth of nipa palms and mangroves that provided shelter to the tidal basins and made them fertile habitat of the brackish water mud clam locally known as tuway. I used to accompany my mother gather tuway in the nipa palm groves. With experienced hands, we scratched close parallel and crossing lines on the basin beds drained by low tide. The clams that burrow in the mud or sand were located by the typical sound emitted as our bolo struck the quarry. Long before my father learned to fish, my mother provided the needed protein in our diet with the delicious flesh of clams, cooked in several ways – with coconut milk, with vinegar and oil, or with dry wheat noodle called miki. We also gathered snails at the groves, the suso at the base of the nipa palms and the sakasaka that crawls up as the tide rises. When boiled in water, the snail’s flat foot is withdrawn into its shell, which made the eating of snails cumbersome and time-consuming. We used safety pins or thorns of lemon tree to pick the flesh.
