This morning, I felt like I was on a wildlife safari rather than a routine hike to do a little fieldwork. I saw so many beautiful animals: a pair of currosaws flapping noisily and calling to one another for over ten minutes, a velvet ant (at least what I think is a velvet ant) over two centimeters long, and a large frog (okay around four or five centimeters, but that is really big compared to the itty-bitty rain frogs and poison dart frogs that we say at other stations). And these wildlife sighting make fieldwork so much fun!





But the big highlight of my day was (drumroll please...) THREE SNAKES! Looking back, I know that seeing three snakes in four hours really is something special. In almost four months in Costa Rica, I have only seen maybe five snakes, most memorably the two hog-nosed pitvipers that Ben, Forest, and I found while shifting through leaf litter at La Selva. And Las Cruces is not supposed to have many snakes. And snakes are supposed to be off the trail. But all these three snakes were very much squarely in the trail. I practically walked on them before realizing that that branch-like thing in the trail actually had scales and eyes.



Now I do like snakes. Really. It just totally unnerves me to almost step on a snake in a country that boosts a fair number of venomous snakes. Two of the snakes were some of the longest fattest snakes I have every seen. The one pictured was well over a meter long. Unforunately, I didn't have a meter stick with me to toss along the snake to confirm it, but it was really big. And the last snake was a bit shorter, but incredibly fat and its scale pattern reminded me enough of the fer-de-lance and hog-nosed pitviper to race by (on the very far opposite site of the trail) without pausing for a picture. Realistically, I don´t think that it could have been either of those species; I think that their ranges are restricted to the highlands. At any rate it was fat and I didn´t want to mess with it. So it has been a snake-y day. I am grateful that I have gotten to see so much of Costa Rica´s herpefauna in a few hours--but next time I would appreciate a little fair warning. If the snakes could hold up bright neon signs, that would be great.