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Sunday, June 3, 2018

Snake Encounter

In the seven years we have lived in Costa Rica, I have seen only two live wild snakes. One was a false coral - which I wrote about in a previous post some years ago - and yesterday I saw a live fer-de-lance or terciopelo as it is known here.

It was in the middle of the road just outside our laneway and our condominium complex guard was trying to convince the snake to move off the road and into the jungle area across from our house. He managed to eventually do this without harm to the snake. It was so amazing to actually see a fer-de-lance and this one was large. They are, however, not pet worthy. Here is what Wiki has to say: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bothrops_asper.

I made a video of our guard encouraging the snake to move off the road. He was able to do this without harm to himself but, really, these snakes are so dangerous.




Here is a screen snapshot of part of the video. You can see the snake with wide open jaws. 


3 comments:

bobbi said...

Yikes!!

Casey Bahr said...

This is the only species of snake, which if I find on our finca, it gets the chop. They are not endangered at all (momma snakes can birth up to 24 live babies in a go!), so I don't feel bad whatsoever. If you get a bite from one on a limb, it's about 50/50 you'll lose it.

Diana Miskell said...

We are renting our house in a condominium community so did not feel it was up to us to kill it. The guard could have done so. I’ve heard of the terrible things that can happen if bitten.