boa

I was cycling by the snake man’s yesterday and he called me in. he had a 10 foot boa curled up below the sink in his bathroom. She was beautiful; fat, sleek, almost marbled in her scales, curled elegantly with her head resting upon her tail. I could feel her smoothness and her weight just in looking at her. someone had seen her below his house, he was very happy to be rid of her: his cats had been disappearing. It was lucky he hadn’t killed her, perhaps because she really was big. The snake man said when he grabbed behind her head she simply pushed her head back and trapped his hand – tightly – between her head and her spine. It took two men to carry her. She certainly looked strong and very heavy. She was a chocolate brown with tawny patches above, a creamy mottled with lichen green below. He was going to take her far out into the forest. She’s the second boa I’ve seen here.

The first was on a walk home last year. It was when I lived in Guanacaste and wasn’t so wary of snakes. I was scrambling up the hill path I used every evening. Hoss was before me and a friend visiting from the States was behind. Suddenly Hoss stopped and his energy changed from forward scout to cautious uncertainty. I pulled him back and there just by the path was a big boa, maybe 7 feet. His head was up and he was moving it from side to side. I think Hoss was happy to be pushed behind me. I shone my torch directly at him and slowly he receded. He was no threat to us. Beautiful though, very creamy colouring with large uneven patches of a greenish toned brown.

I found a dead snail eating snake on the path. He was about 20 inches long, dark grey with black stripes, below a cream flecked with black. I didn’t look too closely – the ants had found him also.

torcelos and terciopelos

There are many creatures here: something like 5% of the world’s animal species live in Costa Rica, and each must find its place within the whole. What to eat, where to eat, when to eat, how to avoid being eaten, how to find a mate, how to create future generations – everyone has their own niche world within the greater various ecosystems.
As a westerner, growing up in Scotland where the most dangerous animal is the rarely seen adder, (the bears and wolves hunted to extinction), I have a conditioned faith that nature is benign. And as a human living in the world’s temperate zones, it largely is: one must search fairly hard to find a grizzly or a rattlesnake or a puma.
Beyond those temperate zones nature, not man, holds the balance. (For the moment: pollution is man’s best weapon against nature and enters into areas where man hasn’t yet taken over.) In such places, man like everyone else must find his or her place. Here, on the edge of the jungle I see nature in her glory daily, whether it be the smell of death and decay from a ditch and circling vultures, to a wasp entering a hole in my chair carrying a paralyzed caterpillar, to the giant orange horsefly with the huge emerald eyes that just bit my leg. As a human at the top of the food chain it still looks fairly benign. But yesterday was book marked by two creatures who’s particular little niche world I would rather not encounter.

Torcelos (a type of bot fly) are rather nasty. The adults are large, bright green, squat and have no working mouth parts. After breeding the female catches mosquitoes and deposits her eggs on their proboscis. When the mosquito bites an egg enters the wound, soon hatches and the grub begins to grow. It lives below the skin feeding on its host for up to two months before pupating. It’s fairly easy to identify a torcelo – the skin is raised in a hard lump, usually discoloured like a bruise and there is a neat round hole, about a millimeter across on the side of the bump. If you discover it early it’s fairly easy to kill it – either squeeze it out (a knuckle size lump holds a 5 millimeter grub), or suffocate it. There are various folk cures, from tying a piece of meat to the lump, to rubbing with mashed hoja de estrella leaves to coating with gasoline. When the grub gets bigger it has to be cut out. Hoss once had one which had grown unnoticed for three weeks (he was staying with friends). When the vet took it out it was half the length of my finger, I couldn’t look, even the vet was horrified. There seems to be a season and we seem to be in it. Hoss has/had 4, clearly a heavily laden mosquito. Luckily I spotted them within a day and coated them with green oil (sulphur, camphor, citronella suspended in oil). It killed them quickly and now we are dealing with his body’s absorption of the matter, hydrogen peroxide and another green oil coating just to make sure. But Young Jack has a big one that sticks out like a third hip bone. It’ll have to be cut out. And we can’t do it yet given the pain and sensitivity he is experiencing in that region.

Terciopelos are often called the most feared animal in Latin America. They are in the viper family and are fairly excitable as snakes go – stories of them attacking rather than retreating are not uncommon. They are rather large too – the females on this coast average 66 inches (over a metre and a half), maximum recorded length is 97 inches. They have long hinged fangs which lie against the roof of the mouth. When they bite the fangs rotate forward into a stabbing position and their hypodermic needle fineness directs venom deep into the tissue. The venom is full of tissue destroying chemicals and digestive enzymes: when a human is bitten up to a third of the blood supply leaves the system and floods extremities or the intestines, the resulting drop in pressure stops the heart. In non fatal bites there is often permanent damage to the kidneys or lungs and to the site of the bite. The snakes look a little like rattlesnakes, brown with a chevron pattern of darker brown outlined in white or cream. They have narrow necks and triangular heads with large eyes and the typical heat sensitive viper pit between eyes and nostrils. They are creamy white or yellow on their underside and their lower jaw is also a pale yellow – their other Spanish name means yellow beard. And like rattlers they shake their tail when threatened, it produces a humming sound. Last night I was going to the banana box and one was lying, rather casually I thought, on the steps. I was rather taken aback. We looked at each other for a while; me trying to determine whether I could wield a machete with any real direction or effect on the steps in the dark, he realizing I probably wasn’t a threat and I certainly wasn’t prey. And then he left. Slowly, unperturbed, exploring a couple of crannies before entering the bathroom and then out of my sight. I didn’t follow him to make sure he really left. He was about 4 feet long. I like snakes, but I wouldn’t call him pretty: the markings are beautiful, but the neck is very narrow and the head a blunt arrow, he looks unbalanced. I was as close as I’d ever like to be. He was no more than 5 foot away, but down 4 steps – there was no danger. I was very very glad the dogs were sleeping inside. I woke this morning thinking I should have scared him or threatened him, chased him off. I don’t know why I didn’t, maybe that old conditioned faith in blind ignorance, maybe trust in the universe, after all I saw him at the top of the stairs.

snake in the bathroom

There’s a snake in the bathroom, what are you gonna do there’s a snake in the bathroom has it come for you? No, it came for the toads. It gave me a fright though, turning on the light and seeing a bright red snake with a black head and a yellow band on its neck searching out corners, completely unperturbed by the light or my presence. I on the other hand was rather perturbed. I hadn’t seen this one before but red, black and yellow is a coral snake’s signature and I had told myself that the single black and yellow band could be juvenile colouring. Coral snakes aren’t aggressive but they are deadly and I didn’t really want share the bathroom with one. I played with the idea of catching it but this was not the time. I wished it well and told it not to return, and kept my eye peeled.
But it wasn’t a coral snake. It was a juvenile mussurana. Mussuranas are ‘good’ snakes to have around, because even though this one was looking for toads, they mostly eat other snakes. They are venomous with rear fangs and they constrict. They attack by lunging themselves at their prey coiling around it and biting to paralyze. The incredibly noxious venom of even the baddest of the bad vipers doesn’t harm it. Scientists are studying mussuranas and the Brazilian government is considering special breed and release centres for them as a snake control tool. But surely we remember what happens to such plans (cane toads in Australia, perch in the Canadian lakes, to name just two manmade natural disasters). Anyway I wish now I hadn’t told it not to return, hopefully it wasn’t listening.

buoyant

I feel oddly buoyant. Trying to locate the source of such lightness: I ate a lot of fruit salad today; the week is half way through; it’s a full moon and the datura is ready to open; I had a good conversation with the snake man; someone suggested a new mange cure? Perhaps it’s a combination of all coupled with me getting home in time to feed the chayote and tomatoes. Whichever, it feels good.
It appears the yellowing chayote is a lack of nitrogen, I dismissed this before because I do give a fair amount of nitrogen to the plants – but it’s worth a try so they got more today. We’ll see.
I was telling the snake man about the beautiful salmon coloured snake I saw the day my camera died, he thought it might be a bird eating snake and the picture in his book while not as glorious a colour, was a match – plus the snake was waiting at the foot of a tall skinny tree with two very obvious birds nests. He was telling me snake stories – one of the locals was bitten by a coral snake, he was found on the road still holding the snake. They took him to the clinic and but when the snake started thrashing around they kicked him out and someone took him to the hospital in Limon, by then he was having convulsions. They ended up taking him to San Jose and hospitalizing him. He dismissed himself the next day and came back on the bus. He should be dead, but he isn’t. The locals kill all snakes on sight, dangerous or not. The expats seem naive (myself included) and tend to believe they can just move the snake out of the garden. But they are territorial creatures and tend to come back. I like snakes; I used to carry around garter and gopher snakes when I found them. It is very difficult for me not to touch those I see here, but it’s different: a gorgeous bright yellow snake, not so very big, so easy to pick up, sitting so still on a tree would in all likelihood kill me with its bite. That’s a big part of being in Costa Rica for me: it is possible to die here. Sounds so stupid and so simple, but life becomes different when death is present. I know this is stupid – car crashes and the dangers of urban life exist everywhere I’ve lived to date. But elsewhere death is hidden, here it’s clear, it can be found hanging in the bathroom, lurking below the bed, lying on the dark path. Death is present daily, vultures circle overhead, the smell of decay comes from ditches; today a street dog chased down and tore apart a chicken in the school yard in front of all the kids. After they spoke of all the blood, then returned to their drawings and schoolwork. This afternoon I found the back of something furry, maybe a raccoon, perhaps a peccary? below the carambola (good for the soil). One becomes aware of life here because one is aware of death.
I told the snake man I was always worried about the dogs getting bit: I live surrounded by jungle on 3 sides and the river on the 4th; the dogs are romping about in the undergrowth daily. He told me it takes a lot of energy for a snake to produce venom and they don’t give it up so easily – if the dog accidently stood on one while running through it was highly unlikely the snake would use venom. He thought that even if the dog attacked the snake it might not use venom, or not enough to kill. It’s highly unlikely the dogs will attack a snake, given the sidelong glances and sideways jumps that happen if they see a vine lying on the ground. This is great news. There are no jaguars so close to human habitation and the crocodiles were long since hunted out of the river; the dogs are at the top of the food chain, snakes are the biggest threat.
The mange treatment is something called green oil and is a mixture of sulphur, citronella and camphor. It smells quite good and it’s an oily green fluid. I hope it makes a difference; it’s the first thing I’ve tried that he hasn’t licked off. Right now he’s hiding under my bed. Unfortunately the smell will alert him. He has allergies to dog food and wheat and is prone to skin problems, it’s not unusual for me to slather him with odd things and he hates it. He’s become very good at deciphering my concern – if I look at him in any way suggestive of checking out his skin off he slinks under the house. It’s almost to the stage where he won’t come near me. If I take him to the vet she gives me antihistamines which work great as long as he takes the tablets but I don’t want him taking antihistamines all his life. He eats well; meat, veg, grains, fruit and a daily multi-vitamin, but something is missing. Lady J has no skin problems, she hasn’t even caught mange.

serpiente update

The snake was identified by the local snakeman as a Northern Cat Eyed Snake. Harmless, unless you’re a frog or a little lizard. I let him go yesterday and was a little alarmed by the way he looked at me as he raced off. I let him go by the river hoping he would find supper here rather than heading for my pond. I wonder. He was toxic, but rear-fanged which means he dribbles poison as he chews – so fairly safe for dog or human. The snakeman has a great book on Costa Rican snakes, it’s amazing the number of varieties here and within each variety the subtle differences in colour and patterns.
He thanked me for not killing the snake as he left and I was hit immediately by a pang of guilt, I was going to kill it. But better I felt this pang than the greater one I would have felt if I had killed it and then identified it as harmless. I like frogs and lizards, a great deal actually and I thought about this snake eating them as they emerge from my pond. Then I remembered the beautiful Laughing Falcon I saw at the edge of the garden, their diet is mainly snakes. This food chain business is beautifully complicated and simple. And it is sentimental of me to worry about any tier of it. We exist beside nature but are woefully removed from her cycles. Coming back from town I cycled past a terribly skinny dog picking through garbage, her teats were big and hanging, she had pups somewhere. She was a street dog and I wondered if she and her litter would survive. I had nothing to give her, nor could I bring her home. It makes me realize again how comfortable we are in our ‘developed’ nations: death and decay, even age, are hidden from us. We are soft, sheltered, unaware. Here we have the trappings of the developed nation which lie like a veneer over the life below. But the veneer cracks and peels in the sun and humidity and life shows through. Perhaps that’s why so many people leave. I realize as I write this how ignorant I am. I talk about animals and yet in the world people are suffering the same fates, starving, at war, operating from no more than survival. It’s too big for me to comprehend.

serpiente

It was about 4pm and the clouds had covered the sky, I was moving my tray of seedlings from the lawn to the deck. I had just set it down and was considering watering them, when a snake slithered from between the half milk cartons that house my seedlings. It was brown and it had a big diamond shaped head – both these things are bad here. It was a baby – about 15 inches. I fetched my machete, wondering as I did so whether I was really going to kill it. It wondered too as it disappeared behind my steps. This was bad. So I waited. I sat and watched it wondering how bad it really was, almost convincing myself it would be okay if it lived under the house. But the dogs love being under the house. Brown and diamond headed means boa or viper. Boa isn’t bad, it wouldn’t be big enough to hurt the dogs for a long time, but a boa bite can be nasty: an expensive and unnecessary vet visit. Viper is really bad. Like deadly. There’s a pretty good chance that I would survive a bite, the clinic is not so far. But the dogs no, and I have to say that losing the dogs to a snake bite is probably my biggest fear here. So, there he or she was hanging out behind the steps and there was I sitting thinking all this trying to ignore the mosquitoes that were telling me it would be dark soon.
As I was sitting there, Frederick went by. Frederick is my neighbor, an old hippy from Berkeley, an acid casualty if ever there was one. At that moment I was convincing myself the snake wasn’t dangerous. I went out to the path and called Frederick asking him if he could identify snakes. The two questions he asked were colour and head shape. Yep it was bad. But Frederick, being the old hippy he is – somewhat dim sighted and believing in the good will of everything (except the US government and guard dogs), decided it wasn’t really a snake and while I was telling him it most assuredly was - having no legs and scales – he caught it in a nearby empty yogurt container and upended it on the deck. I was shocked, and actually quite disturbed, I was still holding the machete but now put it down and fetched a strong glass jar from the house – the kind with that metal latch that catches and locks the lid down. Frederick scooped the container over the jar and in it fell. I latched the lid while the snake was trying to work out what the hell was happening. “Boy oh boy”, said Frederick, “will you look at that, it is a snake”.
Yep, it was a snake. Now I had a snake in a jar. Frederick left and it’s sitting on the deck. I’ve looked at the reptile and amphibian guide to Costa Rica, which is the only one available, but certainly not conclusive. I don’t know what it is. I was worried that it was a Fer-de-Lance: the most feared snake in Central America (so says the book). The Fer-de-Lance is aggressive, deadly and reaches up to 8 foot in length, the females give birth to live young – up to 86 at a time. They are terrestrial snakes and several babies have been killed in the garden over the last 8 years. But while the snake in the jar is brown with a big head and patterned correctly, the snake in the picture has a lot more creamy white in its markings. Actually the snake in the jar is not the colour of any of the pictures in the book. Clearly it’s a juvenile but none of the descriptions mention colour variations. Maybe it’s a little boa. I like snakes. I have this horrible desire to touch it. Obviously I won’t, and indeed every 5 minutes or so I check that it’s still in the jar and hasn’t miraculously opened the lid. But the desire is still there. This is one of those lesson times.
It’s Saturday night. The local snake guy has a store in Playa Chiquita but it’s closed on Sundays. I’ll take the jar to him on Monday. He, she will be okay until then – it clearly ate something recently and the jar has condensation in it and a little mud. Whether I’ll be okay is another matter: I was opening the banana box and a lizard fell on my foot. It was cool and had weight and it slithered. Needless to say I did a little dance which involved flinging the bananas in all directions.