Down in the Cornfield

It was a busy day, as days here go.  Aqueduct meeting in the morning including Meet and Greet of the new follow-up volunteer (he’s great!) and talk of my going-away party.  Then, I invited everyone over to my house in the afternoon to start making piñatas.

Finally around 3 pm people started trickling out of my yard, and my neighbor invited me to go see the dead big snake across the way.  “Big? Should I bring my camera?”.  Traditionally when someone finds and kills a snake, they hang it up on a tree as a warning to others.  I’ve seen a dozen dead snakes, but none much thicker than my thumb.  She said, “Yeah, bring it.”

We walked down behind her house and crossed the stream where I wash my clothes, and then headed up the bank to the area where I helped plant yuca (cassava) last week.  We crossed another narrow stream and then popped out in a clearing surrounded by 10 foot high corn.  And a dying boa constrictor tied to a dead tree.

I yelled and covered my mouth.  The rest of the people gathered around laughed.  This was the biggest snake I’ve ever seen, or at least the biggest without a thick pane of glass separating us.  It was beautiful.

A semi-elderly neighbor found the snake in the stream gulley when he was weeding the corn with his machete.  He called another man to help, and the two of them stuck a stick down into the gulley, bothering the boa until it constricted around the stick.  Then they flung the stick up into the clearing and tied its head to the dead tree, and burnt it by shoving flaming plastic bags into its mouth.  At least that’s what I got out of it.

By the time I arrived, the head was clearly dead but the body was still quivering.  I lifted the body with a stick (40 lbs?) and it started to move more.  I definitely had déjà vu to some Harry Potter scene.

We discussed the possible value of the boa to the Chinese Panamanians, who supposedly eat such snakes, but everyone agreed that transporting the live snake to the main road would be impossible. I was still sad to see such an awesome creature (almost) dead, but at the same time hoping that this boa doesn’t have any other family creeping around my back yard.