My worst nightmare was of this scaled demon clamped onto my calf, its dual syringes in a binding vice grip penetrating right through my rubber boot. It would be a rough walk back to the research station dragging it along the muddy trails. Danny Holley, my co-worker and sole companion at Las Alturas, would be rather dismayed to return to the humble confines of our field station to find me splayed out on the porch, wrestling free of my new appendage with the aid of a Leatherman. Danny claimed that he and his brothers always smelled snakes before they saw them. It's that musky terrarium smell.
All snakes have it.
Having spent their boyhood years on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica and in the Arizona desert, he had owned, chased, and trapped snakes of all persuasions. Danny had no fear at all. I have no idea what snakes smell like though, despite Danny's efforts to explain. Tromping through the tall undergrowth of ferns, saplings, and the multitude of perplexing underbrush became an exercise in how to think of anything but snakes. My attempts to sniff out snakes only made the nomadic searches for bird nests more intense.