It's all about luck

Dette indlæg skrev jeg til Crees' egen blog, derfor på engelsk. Hvis nogen vil have det oversat til dansk kan i lægge en kommentar.

It's all about luck. That sentence really makes sense out in the jungle. You can be here for a day and see a jaguar or you can be here for 6 months and never see one.

This last week i've missed every interesting incidental sighting. Two different groups encountered a bushmaster and another group saw a puma one night. As a reptiles loving guy I even missed not one, but two golden tegus, which are among my favorite lizards here.

So all week I had been complaining about not seeing anything, other than three scarlet macaws.

It all changed friday night while on a herp transect. We had been out for around 2 hours, and ofcourse we hadn't found any frogs or reptiles so I was getting a bit anoyed and tired and just wanted to finish the survey so I could return to my bed. While on the second to last transect after 30 meters we saw flashlight coming down the nearby trail. It was another group that had been out and was on their way home. We started calling them and asked if they had had more luck than us. The first thing I hear is something like “not really but we just saw a Loro Machaco”.

Loro Machaco or Western striped forest pitviper is a small highly venomous snake that is so incredible beautiful. And yeah, if you get bitten, you will start bleeding from your eyes and nose and similar, a nice little cutie. I had been wanting to see that snake for so long, but realisticly I knew I would never see it. A small green snake hiding in the big forest. So my first thought was something like “COME ON! Not again” Then we asked them were and they said “it's right here!” So we rushed out from the transect and there it was. I couldn't believe my luck! Sitting coiled up on a branch was the snake that I never thought I would see. And to see it in the wild! I felt like a little kid in a candyshop. So yes, it's all about luck

If the other group hadn't come by and looked in our direction, none of us would have spotted that snake.

Loro Machaco!!