Wake Up Call

Today, the three of us took our regular walk and it was a good mile and a half each way, maybe more.  The way out in this case is pretty much all downhill while the road back is obviously all up hill.  I must say that I am proud of mom because she has stuck with the plan despite some leg pains.

Shortly after we got back and re-hydrated ourselves, Chris stopped by for a chat.  It takes a while to cool down so it was nice to settle back and chug through our ice cold water.

Chris left shortly before it started getting dark and returned a few minutes later.  He brought with him a small Fer-de-lance snake.

The picture to the left is not the actual snake but very similar in appearance.  The one Chris had was about 6 inches or so long and about the thickness of a baby finger.

Chris had chopped the head off with his machete and brought it over so we could see what it is that we need to be watching for.  It was a stark reminder of the realities of the jungle.  It made me realize how careless (aka stupid) we've been.  I've walked through the grass barefoot, Alex suns himself near the grass also barefoot and we walk up and down the roads every other day.

As I mentioned early in the blog, we have 4 hours to get medical help if we get bitten by one of these things, and I think Chris mentioned that these little snakes are worse because the venom in a little snake is that much more concentrated.  The same is true with the scorpions we saw in Potrero (our first trip).  The tiniest scorpions were the size of a penny.

We fully intend to continue our walks but we're happy that our primary path is pretty clear of weeds etc. and we keep a pretty close eye out when we walk.  The truth is that this little guy would be pretty hard to spot and Chris was fortunate to spot this thing as he walked back to his place.  What makes one a bit nervous now that Chris found one baby snake (they can apparently get as big as 8 feet) is that I've read that a snake brood can be 70-80 little snakes, so that means there must be a whole new batch around somewhere.

You can't spend your life living in fear and we are certainly not going to let this distract us from all the beauty that surrounds us here but it will make us use a bit more common sense when we're out and about.  I'd really like to have a machete or a hoe to chop these aggressive snakes in half if we ever come across one ourselves.  We bring long sticks with us but I am not sure how helpful they would be in that case.

I now think about my earlier post where I said I swish my stick through the weeds ahead of us to chase snakes away.  Dumb idea.  All that would do is antagonize a snake that is known to be fast, mean, and aggressive - so no more "swishing".

This one is dead and buried.  I must admit I "was" actually looking forward to seeing one but I am not sure I understand why since they can easily kill you.  I would die a thousand deaths if anything happened to Mom or Alex because of my carelessness.

Good, but frightening lesson learned.

After night falls we seem to get a variety of little visitors just outside our patio door.  A few nights ago we had a little frog, then a chameleon, and tonight the most unusual looking bug we've seen yet.

I have no idea just yet what it's called but ...it's kind of cool!

The little worm just kind of cruised right past this thing so apparently it's not an omnivore?