Evopropinquitous

Things I Learned as a Field Biologist #9

Snakes.

Snakes are beautiful creatures, undeserving of the scorn often heaped on them.

But one breezy evening early in the dry season, you may be quietly following the monkeys. The sun is low in the sky, and everyone is slowly settling in for the evening. The monkeys have been spotting and harassing two or three rattlesnakes daily - it’s the dry season, after all - but it’s ok because that warning is always there, you can follow the steady mobbing to its cold, beautiful, and safely distant reptilian source. At any rate, there’s nothing to worry about now… you’re on a gravel road with high visibility, there are no long grasses, and the monkeys are calm and drowsing. They always see the snakes before you do. So you stroll on. Looking up.

Until you hear something.

Something that makes you look down.

A terrifying high-speed rattle.

And a split second later, out of the corner of your eye, you see it.

It is directly between your feet.

Its mouth is open.

Its head is up.

Rearing back.

Striking.

The next thing you know, you’re on your back, a full five feet away from where you’d just been standing. Your heart is pounding out of your chest as the monkeys alarm wildly at the four-foot-long rattlesnake that, just now, narrowly missed a direct strike at your delicates.

It’s ok.

Take a deep breath (and then take another).

Scold the monkeys for, this once, having missed a snake in plain sight.

And prepare for a lifetime of helpless chagrin.

Because from this moment forward, despite knowing that they will not harm you unless you absolutely ask for it, you will never see a snake (or upset a snake-sized branch in the leaf litter) again without daintily crumpling your limbs, catching your breath in your throat, and emitting the most delicate, the most timorous, the most tremulous of squeals.