Never Send a Man to do a Woman's Job

On the grounds at the Canopy Tower in Panama a pair of red rumped Caciques built a nest.

This is a Lemon Rumped Cacique.  The Red Rumped Caciques look the same but with a red rump.

Someone spotted a good sized (4 foot) Neotropical Bird snake in a bush near the nest.  

Those hanging things are the nests. 

It was hunting.  I do know how to id all of the local poisonous snakes and it wasn't one of them.  A communal decision was made to try to save the nestling Caciques.  I grabbed a stick and positioned myself on the raised deck to catch said snake.  It would have to go along the railing to get to the nest and that would give me a good chance to pin the head (with the stick) and safely pick up the snake which could then be relocated down the hill.

One of the, um, more mature gentleman who suffers from "I've-watched-Crocodile-Hunter-I-know-what-to-do" syndrome combined with testosterone poisoning (if a blond woman is willing to grab the snake I better get in her way and grab it first) got in my way.  He grabbed the snake in the middle.  He didn't pin the head first or grab near the head.  

Guess what.  The snake bit him.  

Then it was too riled up for me to catch safely so we had to harass it out of the bush and away.  That was much more stressful for all involved (except for the Steve Irwin wanna be) than if he had stayed back and let me handle it.  I have caught plenty of snakes and only been bitten once to my memory.

[why no pictures of the snake?  Ask The Husband who was holding the camera while I attempted to catch the snake.  I guess I should have taken some pictures first.]

Eco-travel

The guess that we went to Costa Rica was close...  It's actually the next country South.

I thought the picture of the boat in the Canal would have been a big clue.  Yes, we went to Panama.

We stayed at what had once been a US Radar Station overlooking the canal and is now an Eco-Lodge called Canopy Tower.  

The views from the tower are fantastic.

You can see the canal.

You can see Panama city

But you are in the midst of a large national park so you can also see stuff like this Howler Monkey (photo taken from two rooms down from ours).

And this Keel billed Toucan (photo taken from our room)

This was the view from our room.

This is George, a three-toed sloth.  He hung out in one of the Cecropia trees outside our room almost every day we were there (photo taken from our room).

This is the rainy season so here is George sunning himself after a day of rain.

This was taking while it was raining.  We had Geoffrey's Tamarins in the Cecropia trees several times.

This is the leaf of a Cecropia tree.  They were fruiting so they were popular with all kinds of things while we were there.

I will be writing up several more posts from our trip as I manage to get pictures sorted.  I only took nine hundred and some photos.  Shouldn't take tooooo long.