Golden Boy

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The name in Spanish is Oropel. The latin is Bothriechis schlegelii, the Eyelash Viper. We got one!!! Well, I took a morning off to go find one on the Watch Trail and low and behold, it was still there (S saw it yesterday afternoon, same spot). And what did I do?

I brought it back. Yep, in a bag, in my backpack, I walked it back 5km to the cabins. Dangerous, probably. But totally cool. The plan is to take a lot of photos. My advisor is going to think this is cool too; they've never seen an eyelash viper here before. That's right, I rule.

Tomorrow is the last day of June. Hard to believe a few entries ago I was feeling like it would never come. Just took out the viper again, and he is very calm for a viperid. Well, you know most people expect venmous snakes to be very aggressive and hard to handle. But really that is just because no one has ever tried to handle them out of fear. That is legit, but this thing was calm as a puppy. It just looked very curious and poked around a lot.

Got a new arm rash today, it's really a new bump every day. Can't wait to be home to let the healing process begin...

PS - Itch now. Write later.

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Photos

Golden Boy
Note the ocular scales that appear to be eyelashes above the eyes. This is my friend and yours, the eyelash viper. First one ever seen at El Zota. So very cool. Calm as a puppy with at least 100X the killing power (cuz really, puppies don't kill that often). Credit goes to Dave Victor for this photo.

More of the Eyelash
It was the coolest snake we got, period.

Watch Out...
Kinda spooked him at this point. Careful Matt, careful...

And Another...
Eyelash vipers range from 7-10% fatal. They inject somewhere around 12mg dry weight in venom. Chances are, a bite will be survivable, at any rate.