My best story involving animals is called 'The Great Snake Hunt.' The main character in the story is Mark McCarthy. He came down to visit on a couple of occasions. He was my warehouse manager at Lil' Critters in Michigan, and before that he worked for Bill Hass at the Miami Serpentarium in Florida for a number of years. He had been collecting snakes since he was about eight years old, and had milked poisonous snakes (extracted venom) on numerous occasions. Mark was short and stocky and had long blond hair. He was in very good condition and had great reflexes.
Mark and I were alone sitting at the house, late at night, with a bottle of Seco. When it was done Mark came up with a bright idea. "Let's go out into the jungle and look for snakes." Mark had hunted snakes in the States, but I had never been on a snake hunt before in my life, and certainly it seemed crazy for me to try this in the jungle at night while half crocked.
However, enabled by the Seco, somehow it seemed like a very reasonable idea at the time.
We pulled on our specially made knee-high boots that a snake fang could not penetrate. I don't know what kind of guarantee the manufacturer had, but I hear they claim that a pair had never been returned. Not too comforting when we consider that if the boots didn't work they would be hard to return – dead.
Next there was my beautiful set of golf clubs. Before I left Michigan Mark got a hold of them and sent them out to be 'adjusted.' When they came back all the heads were gone from the clubs and they had been replaced with flexible metal 'u' shaped hooks. They ended up being a key tool in trying to capture live snakes.
We also had a big bag on a loop at the end of a long pole. When we pulled a string at the top of the bag it would collapse and close tightly around the loop, securing anything that had been captured inside the bag. We also had battery-operated lights that fit onto our foreheads, leaving our hands free.
Once prepared with all of our equipment we set off across the river to hunt snakes. It was very dark outside with the only light coming from the stars. We docked directly across from the house at Neddy and Augustina's place and walked through their platano field, eventually coming to the edge of the jungle.
At night, as you walk through a platano field, the edge of the jungle looms like a giant solid black wall in front of you. Once you walk in you are in. You can be ten miles in or ten feet in, it is all the same, thick, primary growth jungle. The whole environment changes immediately. You can feel the jungle all around you, as if it was a living, breathing entity of its own. It was as if the jungle had a pulse and a heartbeat. The air was humidly thick and full of moisture, and held a symphony of sounds. The most apparent was the sound of millions of insects buzzing all around you, forming an audible backdrop which was a constant buzz. This hum of the insects was offset by the intermittent loud bird chirping for a mate. Against that backdrop you can hear another large bird screeching, or the roar of a distant jaguar. Because of the jungle canopy none of the starlight made it to the floor (I have heard that only two percent of the sunlight makes it to the jungle floor during the day), and it was always pitch black with our lights serving as the only means of orientation. The ground is thick with generations of dead leaves, and as you walk you sink down a couple of inches with each step.
We tried insect repellent, but it seemed that it had no effect, and that the mosquitoes enjoyed its taste. So we did what the locals did, and smeared diesel over our exposed areas. We would be hot and sticky and the air felt so humid that it was like breathing steam, and the smell of the diesel was always present in the air.
When blazing a new trail in primary growth jungle we had to be careful of large spiders. They would spin a web between two trees that looked like a large net. The giant spider (about three or four inches in length) would sit and wait, conspicuously, in the middle of this giant web for whatever happened to get caught. When walking on an established jungle trail it was very common to see these giant spiders and webs spun between the trees along the sides of the trail.
There was no trail where we were, so we made our way through the brush and around the base of the large trees of the canopy. We eventually found what we thought was an animal trail. Since the jungle floor is a solid, thick bed of leaves, you could discern the animal trail by looking carefully. The trail was a small indentation that ran in a straight line through the leaves. Mark explained to me that it was not uncommon to find snakes lying in wait along these makeshift rodent highways. As we made our way down the trail, I was leading the way. Mark was watching the trees up ahead and on the sides, and my light was trained on the ground, trying to follow the animal path. Suddenly, I saw it lying right in the middle of the trail. The mottled brown back exactly matched the colors of the leaves and the look of the trail perfectly. If I had continued walking and had not spotted a little flash of yellow coming from just under it, I would have stepped right on top of this snake.
Coiled in the middle of the trail was an eight foot long Fer de Lance, the second largest poisonous snake in the Americas. The longest is the Bushmaster, which is known to also live in Panama, but I never saw one. The snake we came upon the Panamanians call 'barba amarilla' (translation: yellow beard). It got this name because it has a streak of yellow under its chin (snakes have chins?). It was this yellow that I spotted, and it was the only thing about the snake that did not match the jungle floor.
Breathless and unable to speak, I managed an excited gasp in Mark's direction. When Mark saw the Fer de Lance he got very excited. He grabbed the bag on the pole and one of the golf club snake hooks. I immediately moved about 15 feet away, on the other side of the small open area. I was happy to hold the light for Mark, but that would be the extent of my voluntary participation. The only way this snake was getting to me was if it could outrun me, and I had a 15 foot head start.
We were standing in a 30 foot square clearing with the animal trail running through the middle. One side had a few large bushes and small trees and the other side had a single giant mangrove tree. The mangrove had a large network of above ground roots called buttresses. They cascaded down from the sides of the tree and completely enclosed about 20 feet along one side of the small clearing beside the animal trail.
Mark opened the collapsible bag that was attached to the pole and then took the snake hook and, ever so gently, started easing the snake into the bag, inch by inch, foot by foot. The snake was coiled and lying peacefully on the trail. Although Mark was moving it a little at a time into the bag, the snake did not appear to be aware of what was happening to it.
Suddenly the snake became alert, raised its head and spit out a loud hiss from its now open mouth, bearing its two inch fangs to try to intimidate us. Then it darted away from the bag and directly into the root system of the Mangrove Tree.
Mark dropped the bag and the snake hook and dove for the snake, landed onto his belly, and grabbed only the end of its tail.
The snake immediately made a u-turn and headed in a straight line right back at Mark, and then........ everything stopped!
It was as if time stood still.
The snake had wrapped itself around one of the roots of the mangrove tree while coming back to attack Mark.
Mark, motionless on his belly, with a stranglehold grip on the snake's tail, slowly looked up at me and whispered (like he did not want the snake to hear), "Gary."
"Yeah Mark," I whispered back.
"Where's the head?"
The snake had come up about six inches short in its quest to come back and attack this monster who had grabbed hold of its tail.
"Mark, it is about six inches above your right shoulder."
Mark ever so slowly turned and looked up and spotted the snake’s head while he still had a firm grip on the tail. The snake’s mouth was wide open bearing its two gigantic, deadly fangs. It was groping about desperately in the air, trying to bite onto something.
In one move Mark let go of the tail with the one hand and whirled around and grabbed just behind the snake's head with the other. It is a move that requires great skill and dexterity, but securing the head is the only way you can completely control a large snake like this one. The snake immediately went nuts -- squirming, wiggling, thrashing, twisting, trying anything it could possibly do to break free. Once he had this enormous snake in his hands he was screaming for the bag. The snake was wildly angry, and the snake was much bigger than Mark! He could barely stand trying to hold onto this monster with his hands, while wobbling from side to side under the weight of the beast. I quickly opened the bag and we slowly eased the entire body of the snake into the bag, while Mark still held onto the head.
Then Mark said, "I am going to count to three, let go of the head and throw this snake into the bag. You pull the cord securing the bag."
"Okay, here we go, one .... two .... three."
Mark threw the snake into the bag --
and I pulled the string closing the bag tight --
with Mark's hand locked inside the bag!
Mark shrieked, as the snake was thrashing madly in the bottom of the bag. Now, completely loose in the bag, it was trying everything it could to get out. We finally got Mark's hand free, and headed back to the house. We kept the snake in the bag at the end of the large pole as we walked back. A snake can sense your body heat through the bag, and they have been known to inflict deadly bites through the cloth material on people who are holding directly onto a bag.
The snake we had caught had about 40 baby 'barba amarilla' about one week later. They are born alive and the babies have poison from birth that is just as deadly, drop for drop, as that of the adults.
The acquisition of 40 unexpected baby Fer de Lance made the adventure in the jungle financially worthwhile. But, what was truly of value this night was not the snakes, it was the story! I learned to act out this story, and recounted it numerous times, much to the entertainment of visitors to the Darien.
