A nocturnal serpentine visitor

About 10 of us had bunked down in the dormitory on Santa Cruz Forest Reserve on the banks of the Rio Mazan, about an hour and a half north of Iquitos, Peru. We had arrived earlier in the day after traveling southward from Madre Selva Biological Preserve on the more northerly Rio Orosa where we spent the last 5 days.

After several herp-filled hours in the field at Santa Cruz, most of us were were more than ready to call it a night. But it seemed that some of the herps weren't.

It began raining an hour earlier making use of digital cameras in the field difficult. Since we do allow some field collecting to assure that all tour participants have an opportunity to photo all herps found, there was a bag or two that contained snakes in the dorm. All would be photographed and released the following day.

Suddenly, from one end of the pitch black dorm came the query "Did one of you lose a snake?" Flashlights came on. Bags were checked. The answers from beneath 3 mosquito nets were "no," "no," and "no." All bags were secure.

"Well, I think there's a snake next to my bunk."

Instantaneously awake, we all clambered down to the far end of the dorm and, sure enough, stretched over the loose end of Jerry's mosquito netting was a beautiful 4 foot long Brazilian rainbow boa, Epicrates c. cenchria (these were once thought to be the Peruvian subspecies, E. c. gaigeae, but have now been synonymized with their better known Brazilian counterpart). We had seen several during that evening's walk and since everyone had taken photos, our visitor was taken outside and released.

You just can't help but love the Amazon.

More photos below ...

Our sleeping quarters just happened to be on the nocturnal pathway of this Brazilian Rainbow Boa. The rainforest is less than a meter away.

Author, photographer, and columnist Richard Bartlett is one of the most prolific writers on herpetological subjects in the 20th century. With hundreds of books and articles to their credit, Richard and his wife Pat have spent over four decades documenting reptiles both in the field and in captivity. For a list of their current titles, please visit their page in our bookstore.