Croc waiting for the bus
One morning, at 7am, I went to the bus stop. There in the middle of the deserted bus stop was a meter and a half long dead crocodile. It truly looked like he was waiting to catch the bus with me to San Jose. I just stood there for half hour thinking how weird my life has become that here I’m standing next to a dead crocodile and even weirder I only find it somewhat surprising.
Frog Wake up Call
5am, the cows start making a lot of noise and I half open my sleep ridden eyes hoping to fall back to sleep for at least another 45 minutes. At that moment I notice a dark lump just 10cm over my head on the headboard. As I realize that it is a frog just chillin out I leap out of bed worried it was going to jump on my face at any second. My host family proceeds to laugh at me the rest of the week for being so sensitive of a frog! ‘Oh what a foolish Gringa…!’
Large Kitty
My town has one bus a day to site that leaves at 11am. Since I do not make that bus often, I either have to wait and hope someone drives by or I walk the 11km uphill to my town. On this occasion I was walking and it started to pour so I was waiting under a branch hoping it would stop. It didn’t. I decided to keep walking and just as I took my first step, I heard a noise in the forest 2 meters away from where I was standing. This large kitty, that came up to my knee, totally black and with this large tail was jumping into the forest. I don’t know if it was a jaguar or a panther but whatever it was, it was cool! Should I’ve been worried? I don’t know, I didn’t even have time to consider that.
Scorpion in the Dark
Since this incident I never put my feet down from my bed without looking to see if there is a scorpion or snake lying in wait for me. The morning I got stung by a scorpion, I woke up at 4am wanting to go the bathroom. I didn’t want to completely wake up so I thought it would be a good idea to just stumble there in the dark. Bad idea! As I placed my right foot down for my second step I felt a slight crunch and then an instant sting and excruciating pain on the side of that foot. I turned the light on and nothing was there and I started to worry that it might have been a snake (and I would have needed to actually do something about this) But then I saw the scorpion half come out from under my bed. That was a huge relief. Ice really helped the swelling and after 2 hours the pain started to ebb away, though my lips, tongue and fingers were numb all day and wouldn’t stop tingling.
It isn’t Easy to be a She Turtle
I got to see a turtle laying eggs! It was amazing! 6 of us were walking on the beach at 9pm when we almost literally stumble upon a turtle (maybe a meter long) struggling up the beach. We follow the turtle and stand quietly as she starts digging a hole in the dry sand. It takes her a good 40 minutes to dig the whole and then she starts dropping the eggs. Because they go into a trance we could get very close and shine a flashlight to see the whole process. Turtles lay between 80 and 100 eggs and we got to see how she would raise her back legs and push hard with each egg she laid. After that was completed she made snow angels trying to cover up the location of the hole (quite unsuccessfully). Finally she started her struggle down the beach towards the water (it made me tired just watching the effort) The sad part of this story, is that the turtle was maybe 7 meters away when a man came with a bucket to unearth the eggs. Though very illegal, the demand for turtle eggs here is pretty high.
Why did the sloth cross the street?
One time I was in San Isidro, one of the larger Tico cities, for a basketball camp. We were returning from dinner when we see this bit of fur on the side of the road. We think it is a dead dog until we realize it is moving. This completely unhurt sloth was attempting to cross the road! Sloths are VERY very slow animals always up in trees so seeing it on the ground was unheard of. We knew the sloth had no chance of crossing the road without getting run over (It probably would have taken hours for it to cross at its speed) so we were able to get a police car that was going by to agree to take it to some trees. Getting the sloth out of the car was very difficult since it hooked its claws into the leather seats but eventually we got the very angry and, for a sloth, very aggressive animal out of the car and into a tree. It was quite amazing!
These are some of my more memorable animal encounters in Costa Rica, though I could still tell about how I became a bat serial killer, the time a toad jumped on my foot during a graduation at the church, how I had to duck under a fence to avoid some mean cows, palm sized spiders in my house or people in town getting bit by snakes…
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