Animal encounters

 As I said before in a blog, the Cahuita National Park is also protecting an endangered reef near the coast. The reef is built up from over 35 species of corals including elkhorn corals and smooth brain corals   http://www.livestockusa.org/BRAINS.html
Elkhorn corals are actually in danger of diseases and death because of human feces (from sewage), according to a study done by the University of Georgia. The very important coral, that give shelter and food for countless species of invertebrates and fish, gained federal legal protection in 2006 along with stag horn corals, and are now even rared in zoos too save them. In 2008 there was also passed a law that prohibited all activity that would harm the reefs, but the reefs are still dying, leaving huge areas deserted. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw3ylqPxeuU
Snorkeling there is excellent, and during the dry season you can snorkle from the beach. Now it it rainy season, so I went out on a tour with a boat to do snorkeling at 3 points near Punta Cahuita. It was amazing. I saw a lot of colorful fishes, some that I had not seen before, and beautiful squids changing colors. After snorkeling we went to Punta Cahuita to have a lunch and a walk. We were 4 in my group, and had a guide for the walk. We met other groups of people there but the guides made sure that the groups kept apart. Below are pictures of snakes. On the first picture it is difficult to see the snake, it looks like the branches.
 

I really wanted to see a sloth, so I was so proud of myself (and count myself as an excellent animal finder ;) ) when I was the one that spotted something in a tree that the guide passed by. Sloths are difficult to see because they do not move much, and when I saw one, I was not sure if I really saw something worth seeing, but the guide confirmed that it was indeed a sloth. Since I love so much writing about animal medicine (and psychology) I will create a blog about sloth medicine, and some other animal medicine.We actually saw 4 sloths that day, and one them was a baby showing us how to give a good scratch. A troop of curious howler monkeys lay digesting their lunches in the trees.

 We saw many birds and I photographed some, but unfortunately the camera I have now is not as good as the one I had. I saw 2 different species of vulture; black vultures and a king vulture (they are more beautiful looking). And the bird sitting by the water might be a heron. We swam over coral reefs and walked through lush vegetation, on a sandy beach, crossed a bridge over a mash and mangrove swamps. Can you find the snake on the picture below? Hint; it is yellow. It is a yellow eyelash viper, it is venomous (the most dangerous in Central America), found in Central - and South America, and they come in a wide variety of colors, I have seen pink ones. The eyelash viper is a mystery to the rain forest because of the 5 color phases. Many animals and humans are afraid of the ferocious looking snake, but fortunately it will never attack a human unless the human is stupid enough to attack it. And unfortunately that is why humans are bitten; when they see a snake, people in Costa Rica go for the head with a jungle knife, and that is when they are bitten. Apart from that they will only have an interest of attacking their food; small mammals, lizards, frogs and birds. The eyelash viper give birth to live babies (I have witnessed an eylash baby being born!), and once it crawls out of the mother it is quite capable. However I have read that there IS actually a little bit of child rearing going on; they learn from the mother for 2 months and during that time she will also protect them. The reason why it is called "eyelash viper" is because it has some small antena-look-alike structures above the eye that makes its head look like a flower from a birds perspective. So it is a camouflage that also helps the snake sneak up on a prey and quickly inject its venom. They can live for a year without food. Snakes are interesting because they dwell in so many places and come in so many colors, shapes and sizes. Snakes represents versatility, transmutation and change. Their natural behavior is to shed the skin and leave the old one behind, adapting to new ideas. Unfortunately the snake has gotten a bad reputation from the Bible, and is seen by many as evil or bad news. But in the older mythologies the snake is an icon for healing and spirituality. The snake is used as a symbol in the pharmacy industry. Snakes awaken spiritual and magical intuition in people.Snakes are associated with unseen creative forces at work. With the snake totem the powers of intuition and observation becomes keener and more precise. The combination of change and intuition will allow great new development in life and a proper instinct for deciding which changes will be effective. The snake is openness to new experiences and opened horizons. The snake totem possesses the following virtues: Wisdom, healing, intuition, awaking of creative forces, ability to change without resistance, new opportunities for change, material vitality, intellect, power over rashness in speech and thought, emotional control, increased sensitivity to the environment, increased power of observation.

A story I love to tell sometimes is about the time I stood half a meter from a rattlesnake in Bolivia. Rattlesnakes are also vipers, belonging to pit vipers. The only reason why I think it was a rattle snake was because it rattled. I was walking with "my" jaguar, Yaguaru in the jungle one day (I worked for the organization Inti Wara Yassi for 8-9 months in the Amason Basin in Bolivia), and on the way to his beach he suddenly stopped dead. I heard the sound of a rattle and saw a snake with its head and upper body lifted up, and it was between me and Yaguaru. Yaguaru stared at it in with huge, round eyes, but stood dead still, the snake did not attempt to strike, but it was clearly warning us. I was in quite a hopeless situation since both sides of the path had trees with spines, so there was no way of going around. Strangely enough I was not afraid, I was calm, thank God, and it kept Yaguaru from doing anything that would put us in danger. I did not think for one minute that the snake would bite me. It was hopeless for me to get to Yaguaru, for one he is a jaguar and you just do not jump, or step towards a jaguar when a snake is between you and the jaguar, so I had to make him come to me. I talked to him encouraging him to jump over to me, so I moved carefully backwards a little to make space for him. I also talked to the snake telling it that we just wanted to pass, and that I respect its space. I also told it that we would come back the same way, and that we were friends and thus would not harm it. I talked to Yaguaru and told him that the snake would not bite us, that we would be safe and that he had to trust me and come to me. In the end he made a big leap to my side and we continued to the beach. Maybe some readers will think that I am a "werido" who think I can talk to animals and that they understand. But they do understand everything. They are all soulful, intelligent beings, I know that because it was my daily life at that time, communicating with big cats, monkeys, birds, peccaries and coatis. I never thought for one minute that it would be fruitless to talk to a snake that was threatening to strike.

The beautiful spider on the picture below is the golden silk orb-weaver. The female is huge and the male looks like a tiny fly. He has a difficult job getting to the female and not being eaten. The male of spiders will send messages to the female by touching the treads of her web with his feet in a certain pattern when he is wooing her. This will send vibrations through her web that tells her that she is visited by a male, as opposed to a victim that has been caught in her net. The males interest is, of course, to mate with her, but sometimes the female decides that she is more hungry than in the mood for love, so she eats him in stead. Talk about girlpower! The females weave quite an impressive web, and they are noted for it because the web of a mature female can reach a meter in width. The treads are yellow, so they look like gold in the sunlight. If the male is successful, the female spins an egg sac on a tree and lay hundreds of eggs. If you are bitten by one you will experience local pain and redness from its venom. many people find spiders scary and repulsive. In animal medicine, and animal psychology, people are encouraged to look closely at animals they find repulsive or are very fearful of, because it also gives you an important message. The spider is linked with time, and in India with the Goddess Maya, the weaver of illusion. You may ask you self, if you fear the spider, am I in charge of my own life /destiny? Is there a balance between my past and my future? Physical and spiritual? Yin and yang? How do I look upon my future? The spider reminds us that we are the center and in the center of our own world, and this is how it should be, because only by knowing yourself first you can know the Universe. The spider is so fascinating that I want to write more about it. But I will stop here. Afraid of spiders or not, believe in spider medicine or not, they are a blessing to this planet in so many ways. For one they control the bug population. 

"Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect."
~Chief Seattle~

Punta Cahuita in the background. On the path we would also meet some interesting ants called "limpiadores", cleaners. The reason is because they clean. They march out in the jungle in big armies and carry away everything that is dead. The guide told us that they will occasionally come into peoples houses in huge numbers, and the only thing the person can do is to leave the house for a few hours and let them do what they have come to do. Clean! Dead animals and pieces of food lying around in your house will be carried out. The reason why you better leave them there to do their job is that if you get in their way, their bite can be quite painful. On the picture below; our boat for the day (the bluish greenish one).