101 ways to die in the jungle
We started today off by joining a guide on a natural history walk around La Selva Biological Station. We got to see a lot of cool things including a yellow scribed basilisk, which looked nothing like Harry Potter’s basilisk, troops of army and leaf cutter ants, many birds including two toucans, blue jean frogs, bullet ants, and a yellow eyelash pit viper. I’m just going to talk about the last two items on this list a bit.
There is an entomologist known as Dr. Justin Schmidt who has created an index known at the “Schmidt sting pain index,” which ranks the stings of different animals. On this index, the bullet ant has received the highest ranking of a 4 with Schmidt describing the pain as, “pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like fire-walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch rusty nail in your heel.” Luckily, these ants are not hard to miss and they are usually solitary (from what I have noticed) and it has been fairly easy to avoid them.
The eyelash pit viper is so named because the scales above their eyes look like eyelashes when they become more mature. They have one of the most venomous bites in Costa Rica. I was lucky enough to see a young one, which was so tiny and so perfectly positioned that it looked like a flower.
Today brought about a monumental day in La Selva, the beginning of the rainy season. Now when it rains here, it pours. This rain that was so greatly anticipated and appreciated brought about new life in the forest, and caused a few trees to fall, continuing the growth cycle that is so imperative in a rainforest.
Because of the new rain, we decided to go on a night hike. If I were to rename this, I would call it a “bug hike” or even a “survival hike.” Bullet ants are nocturnal and I saw many more during this hike than I have any of my other days in Costa Rica, combined. There were also the troops of smaller ants, which become aggressive if you aren’t paying close enough attention to where you are standing, which is very hard, especially at night. We even saw a fer-de-lance, another very dangerous snake, the most dangerous in Costa Rica. Fortunately, I made it out of the jungle alive, I even made it back to my room without slipping on the suspension bridge that hangs over the river that runs through the station!
