Slithering creatures too close for comfort

So here’s a fun story that’s not necessarily “a day in the life” but it happened.. twice!

This is a story of killing a snake in my house. I found myself telling this story over and over to people back in the States when they asked about what was new and exciting in Panama. I honestly didn’t think it was a big deal at the time. People in my community don’t find this stuff very surprising, although it makes great conversation topic. They deal with it all the time. But to people back home, this is the kind of stuff that Peace Corps is made of..

It’s late April, around 10pm. I’m in my little hut getting ready to go to bed. I’m exhausted and have no idea why I’m up so late. I hear a rustle in my thatch roof. I assume it’s a lizard. Lizards are a common household guest that hangs out in the thatch, looking for bugs and spiders. The locals like lizards and rightfully call them “limpia casa” (house cleaner). I look up with my dim headlamp and squint when suddenly I realize that it was not the camouflage lizard I was expecting, but a much larger, slithering creature. It was indeed a snake: bright red and black with a white belly. Immediately I guessed it was a deadly coral snake that the locals tell me horror stories about, but recently was corrected by a self-proclaimed snake expert that it was most likely the non-deadly king snake. Whatever. This snake, deadly or not, was weaving himself in and out of the thatch, directly above my bed and I was not happy about it. I climbed up to my loft as fast as I could with my machete and took a swing, but I was scared to put a hole in the roof, so my wimpy hit was a failure. He got away. I was sat still for the next few minutes, listening for his whereabouts, but heard nothing. He was weaving around somewhere in the roof, probably looking for mice, and likely to reappear at any moment. Now what? I put fresh batteries in my headlamp and held tight to the machete, waiting for any sign of life in the roof. Nothing. An hour went by. By now, it was about midnight; I was exhausted but could not sleep with a (what I thought was a deadly) snake on the loose. Not knowing what to do and overcome by exhaustion, I strung up my hammock with intentions of sleeping there. Hammocks are the safest place you can be in the tropics and now I know why they were invented. I lay in the hammock for about 5 minutes, feeling defeated and violated by this predator, when suddenly I look over and see that the snake has reappeared in a different part of the thatch: right next to my hammock! I froze. But only for a second. I reached for my camera, but was trembling so bad that most of the pictures didn’t come out so well. Then I scolded myself for not focusing on the death of this snake sooner. He started to slither away again, so I grabbed the (much smaller) kitchen knife this time to get a more precise hit. Count of three. Got’em! He fell from the ceiling, wounded, but not dead. As he fled out into the yard, I chased behind, barefoot, with machete in hand swinging violently until I was sure he was a goner. What a (ridiculous) site!

So that’s my first snake-killing story. I hope it’s my last.

P.S. Snakes get a bad wrap for being poisonous, deadly creatures, but the truth is that only a few really are and in most cases, the antivenom can be found at a hospital few hours away. Snakes are an important part of the eco-system and its terrible to promote killing them just upon sighting them. This snake, however, crossed the line. The roof above my bed is just too close for comfort, so this one had to go. Since this incident, I finally put up my bug net around my bed which sufficiently serves to keep the creepy-crawly things out of the covers.

(Pictures below: Other snake encounters over the past year in the country, in my house or otherwise)