WE SAW A SNAKE TODAY. A very large one. Boa constrictor. Maybe 5 feet? Very pretty, just laying on the ground across from a massive leaf-cutter ant’s nest.
So I think that’s really it for me—that’s all I really came to see, thanks very much. Seeing a snake in the wild is always a thrill, but a boa constrictor in the rain forest is just an unparalleled delight. I do admit the whole experience threw me right back into my on-and-off obsession with herpetology, and I spent the next few hours rolling over logs in the vague hope I’d see another slither out.
We encountered the boa while setting out the camera traps, which was our main project of the day. The project required that we set one camera facing the trail and another paired camera a few minutes off-trail, and this was where the real adventure was at. With Scott machete-ing a path through the thick jungle underbrush and blazing our trail, I felt like a proper Indiana Jones and decided right then to buy a machete as soon as the opportunity arose. The first time we went off trail I spotted my prettiest Orthotera yet—a lubber grasshopper nymph, about 2 cm across, black with abstractly placed yellow and orange stripes. I caught it with a jar, and have it sitting atop my dresser right now, awaiting my Orthoptera lesson tomorrow where I’ll show it off. I’ve attached a picture of it and the quick sketch I made of its patterning. Additionally, someone else found a pink oblong-winged katydid (and as you know, katydids are by far my favorite Orthoptera). Apparently these are genetic mutants, and rare to find in the wild. I kept it for a while, watched it actively defecate in the jar, and then released it after feeling bad that I’d left it in a glass case filled with its own feces. I took a few pictures of it, and managed to snap the only actually-good, well-focused photo I’ve taken so far.
As of yet I have not touched an Orthoptera, and this is starting to weigh on me psychologically. I feel slightly like an unloving mother. Maybe tomorrow the resolve will strengthen, but no promises.
