UFO in Panama!

Many of you reading this already know that I am a bit nerdy at times....I might as well admit it to the rest of you because you will figure it soon enough. But really, I am also a fairly normal person too.

So it all started last year...the observation of one of the coolest bugs that I have ever seen. Panama has some great wildlife to observe...but I doubt that many people have visited to see the lightning bugs. Yes, lightning bugs (or fireflys to some) do exist, they are not just a Disney or Hollywood creation as my fellow PCVs from the west coast thought...poor souls who grew up deprived of lightning bug wonders.

Here on the island we have "normal" lightning bugs, a little bit smaller than those in the states and sometimes a bit more sychronized (video of sycronized lightning bugs)....but basically the same. We also have two other types of lightning bugs. My nerdy self just wiggled in excitement at the diverisity of it all.

The first one I noticed had a big bright orange light...its light was about the size of my thumbnail!!! I only got to see it flying as it tended to fly faster and higher than the "normal" lightning bugs. It also seemed to flash with a bit more frequency and when it flashed its light was frequently a sequence of flashes, not just an on and off again. I was facinated by these bigger orange lightning bugs, but they seemed too fast for me to catch, especially since they seemed to like the woods around our house more than the fields...making running after them much more difficult. So I just admired from afar waiting for the day that one would make the mistake to cross my path.

There was also a lightning bug who had the normal green/yellow color to its flash. I only knew that it was a different type at first because the strength of the flash was so strong. It strobed with the power (and sometimes the speed too) of a weak camera flash!! One night we had one of the strong flashers in our bed room, so I got out of the mosquito net to see what it looked like. It was a fairly non-descript beetle...a bit bigger (about 2x the size) than of a normal lightning bug. Pretty cool, not as common as the other two...but very powerful flash!

So just imagine my gleeful nerdyness when I looked out the "window" (fancy word for the space where we made the bamboo wall in the kitchen short to keep the view) and saw two bright green lights at the edge of the woods near the house. They looked like green LED lights. So of course I went to look thinking that it would likely be two bugs...and was very excited to find one bigger beetle with two lights.


This is what the lights looked like. He could control the brightness of the light to some extent...it could be very bright or dim...and powered up and down like it was on a dimmer switch. Very cool.

This is what he looked like under a light. Pretty non-discript in his color and markings.

This is to give you a sense of scale and size. He crawled all over my hand for a few minutes...turning his lights on and off. If touched the lights turned on very bright. I was finally tired of bothering him when he decided to fly away...and shocked the heck out of me...as he took off and flew away the underside of his abdomen light up ORANGE!! I was thrilled!!

Lucky for me, he did not fly far and I was able to chase him down and look at him again. I looked at his underside...but there was no way to tell that he had an orange light under there...it must be covered when at rest. But each time he prepared to fly the orange light would flare up on the underside. After much patience on my part and a hand over top of him to keep him from getting far I managed to get a photo of both lights. The orange light is just starting up in this photo.

It turns out, I think, that he is the same lightning bug that I have been admiring flying around our house. The one that was brighter, orange and tended to fly faster and higher than the "normal" lightning bugs. I had wanted to see one up close and never managed to catch one until now...and even then it was a suprise!

Below is a brief video of the lightning bug taken by Kevin. If you are very observant you can see the orange light start up in the moment before the beetle escapes us photographers with a flying get-away. Watch carefully...when he goes it is FAST!

In my wanderings around the web I visited the Wikipedia site on fireflies and found out that sycronization of flashing is common in some areas...

"In the United States, one of the most famous sightings of fireflies blinking in unison occurs annually near Elkmont, Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains during the first weeks of June. Congaree National Park in South Carolina is another host to this phenomenon."

Guess I know what I want to see if I can ever manage to hit Tennessee in early June!

I continue to watch the lightning bugs in facination. There are some really cool insects here to see...and to photograph. I would like to thank my faithful and patient lighting aide Kevin for his help to photograph the bugs that visit us. Some people would think I am just strange, but he just smiles and holds the flashlights steady.

Panama National Election 2009

"Change" seems to be a global presidential theme. On 3 May 2009, Panama held their once-every-five-years elections, and Ricardo Martinelli (millionaire owner of the Super99 chain of supermarkets here in Panama), who started his own Cambio Democratico (Democratic Change) party, defeated Balbina Herrera, of the PRD party, a long standing party which currently holds office with Martin Torrijos. (Presidential candidates can not succeed themselves, so Torrijos did not run.)

But while the global themes of campaigns were familiar to the local campesinos (countrymen) in our area (we were often asked about Barack Obama, who did we vote for, and the similarity in themes between Obama and Martinelli), elections in Panama are much more of a local event. Be sure to watch the video at the bottom of this post.

As I said, elections are held every five years. At that time, citizens vote for Presidente, Diputado, Alcalde, and Representante. The Diputado is like a Representative in the US, serving at the national assembly level. The Alcalde is like a mayor or county executive. And the Representante is in charge of the local level issues (such as attracting the government funding to accomplish things like the solar panels all the houses have in our community, or the sidewalk constructed last year). He (or she; we had two female and two male candidates this year) is generally the first person residents ask when they need help with a project, need building supplies to improve their house, or need a new battery for their solar panel.

So over the past year, newspapers, TV, and radio were covered with ads for candidates (many analysts said that Martinelli could sink so much of his own money into the campaign that it greatly changed the dynamic and methods compared to previous campaigns). Other popular advertising methods include Tshirts, hats, and flags, as well as banners on the street lights, posts and trees. These banners often indicated who to vote for at all four levels. We even had a banner appear on the island that listed PRD candidates for Presidente, Diputado, Alcalde, and the local Representante (sorry, I didn't get a picture). When you see the ballots below, you'll understand how they can indicate who to vote for. But all organized events and paid advertising had to end by midnight on Thursday, 30 April. This was rather nice, as it provided a three day respite before the election. (The sale of alcohol was prohibited in this time period as well, so you couldn't be drunk the day of the election. Unless you made your own.)

El Dia de la Votación was Sunday, 3 May. And it is an event. Many folks are still registered to vote where they grew up, so although we have only about 150ish adults on the island, there were 265 votes cast in each race. (The influence of "outsiders" was greatly discussed, since they aren't really affected by the vote they cast for Representante, which to most of our neighbors, was the most important race.) Each of the four candidates for Representante provided a number of boat rides from port to the island in the days prior, and food the day of. Why food? Because everyone goes to the school to vote (polls opened at 7am) and then hangs out for the day, chatting with friends, etc, and awaiting the close of the polls at 4pm. At which time, the counting begins.

The voting is held in the school, with three members of the Tribunal Electoral (the election board) and one policeman to ensure the security of the process. (There is no vote by mail, or absentee voting, so those four could only vote for Presidente. An odd twist to service towards voting.) On the wall outside the voting room, they pasted instructions on how to vote and sample ballots.

(Fairly simple instructions on how to obtain your ballots - you need your ID card - then how to mark them, and finally how to cast them in their appropriate box.)

(No cameras, video cameras, or cell phones allowed inside the voting room.)

There is a separate ballot for each race. Each ballot has its own color coding to facilitate the process.

(The blue Presidential ballot, with pictures and names of candidates with party names and flags. )

There were EIGHT parties early on in the race. As time passed, alliances were formed that generally held at the lower levels as well. In a drawing of lots, the order of the parties on the ballots was established. PRD drew 1 (the red, white, and blue striped flag) and Cambio Democratico drew 5 (the green and pink "CD" flag). If you wonder why several of the photos and names look similar, that is because PRD formed alliances with Partido Popular (2, green star on blue flag) and Partido Liberal (6, red/white/red striped flag), and CD built alliances with Molirena (3, red and yellow triangles flag, with a red rooster), Partido Panamanista (4, purple/yellow/red flag), and Union Patriotica (7, red with orange stripe flag). A former president formed his own party, something like Vanguard of the Moral Front, and was spot 8 (of the 269 votes in our island, he received 2 sympathy votes from folks who apparently knew Martinelli would win and didn't want the guy to get nothing).

So if you wanted to vote for Martinelli, but were really a fan of the Molirena party instead of Cambio Democratico, you could cast your vote in spot 3, instead of spot 5. Thus your party (Molirena) was credited with bringing support to the alliance, and in the total count, Martinelli got your vote. Then (so goes the idea), when he is president, he will support your party's desires as well and reward your party bosses for the votes they brought to his election.

(The orange Diputado ballot. The pictures and names are smaller, and there are three "open" positions for anyone running as an independant. But the party flags and numbers remain the same.)

By the level of the Diputado ballot, some of the Presidential alliances had broken, and parties were running competing candidates.

(The pink Alcalde ballot. Molirena, 3, did not have an Alcalde candidate or alliance. The blue stamps indicate that this ballot has been nulled, so people can look at it outside of the voting room.)

All of the parties were allowed to have an observer in the voting room. Four of the parties did on our island, and the observers were residents of the island. Each one had a full list of the voting roster (a book with the name, picture, and ID number of each person registered to vote in that voting location). They watched from 7am until the counting ended, about 11pm, and ensured ballots were cast correctly, without coercion, and counted correctly. We did have one blind man vote (he does not live on the island, but I think grew up here; we have seen him before) and he was assisted by someone to mark his ballots, fold them (into quarters) and drop each one into the appropriate cardboard box, one for each race, with the appropriate color across the top.

(Our race for Representante. There were four candidates.)

"Chayo" ran on PRD (1), aligned with Liberal (6); he actually lives off-island, although he has a house in the south and is the brother of several residents. Popular (2) and Vanguard (8), did not have candidates or alliances at this level. Efrain Miranda (the Representante for the past 20 years, or since the new government process was instituted after Noriega's removal by the US and George Bush Sr) ran on Molirena (3), aligned with Panamanista (4). Paula (our first host mom on the island) ran on Cambio Democratico (5), aligned with Union Patriotica (7). We also had one Independant, Vielka, running alone in the pale blue 9 spot; she also lives off island but has a house in the south and family.

At 4:11pm, the workers from the Tribunal Electoral officially closed the voting and taped the boxes closed. The policeman entered the room to ensure the boxes were not messed with. The officials demonstrated all the remaining, unused, ballots to the observers, and then all seven of them walked outside and burned them (so no one could cast an extra ballot). Then they opened the box of Presidential ballots and counted them all out onto the table. 269, which is how many their records showed had voted that day (265 local, plus the three workers and policeman). Then they returned all the ballots to the box. They taped large sheets of paper on the wall, one for each party, each sheet with 20 rows of 15, to record the counting. Then one worker pulled out a ballot, determined how it had been voted, announced it to the crowd (while the party observers were in the room, interested community members crowded the windows and counted along), then demonstrated it to one window, the observers, the other window, and finally handed it to a second worker who double checked that the announced vote was correct and built piles for each party. The third worker marked one vote on the sheet of the announced party.

April made a video of this process. I highly recommend observing a part of the participatory election process that takes place in Panama every five years. Can you imagine this kind of interest in the United States? This video was during the Presidential count. You can see the boxes for the other three offices next to the reader.



After this, we walked back to the house, ate dinner, and I walked back again about 8:30 that night. They were in the midst of counting for Alcalde. After each race was finished, the workers summed the totals, the observers gave agreement, and the workers recorded on the official papers the votes per party, total votes, blank votes, null votes, and then they signed and the observers signed. Then they took the ballots and the sheets from the wall, and they all went outside and burned all the papers. No hanging chads around to count later.

The count for the Representante, the race the residents were most interested in, began about 9:30pm. It finished about 11. While Vielka (the independant) started off strong, Chayo collected a streak of votes and then never relinquished the lead. With their alliances only suppling a few votes to each candidate, their totals were: Chayo, 112; Vielka, 82; Paula, 35; and Efrain, 33. Some folks were very happy, some were frustrated, some were confused. Some thought the Representante should live on the island, but obviously even the majority of island voters didn't agree, so it wasn't a conspiracy of outside voters. I talked with Paula later, and she was happy; she may not have won, but her presidential candidate had won handily, and that was enough for her.

It was a long and tiring days for us, and we didn't even vote (we were taking Family Fotos as a fundraiser for the library project). But what an amazing chance to see such interested and enthusiastic involvment in the democratic election process.

Ngöbe Dancing

(Kevin was logged in when I uploaded the videos, but this is really April.)

I recently worked as a Facilitator and Team Leader at the Project Management and Leadership (PML) conference for Group 61 Volunteers and their Community Counterparts. The PML conference teaches very basic leadership skills (how to use an agenda, how to write a letter to an agency, how to speak about your project to others, how to run a meeting) to Panamanians. All of the participants are chosen for having demonstrated leadership potential in their community.

One evening during PML is Cultural Evening, with sharing of aspects of culture. Conference participants are told before they come that they will have a chance to share their culture with the group and thus come prepared with crafts and demonstrations planned. Several volunteers are serving in Ngöbe sites. The Ngöbe are an indigenous peoples living mostly in the Comarca Ngöbe Bugle, between Bocas del Toro, Chiriquí, and Veraguas. They shared, along with their volunteers, several of the dances from their culture.

Below are videos clips of a couple of the dances that they shared with us. In the videos notice the clothing...the women are wearing traditional nagua dresses. A nagua dress is characterized by the voluminous quantity of brightly colored material and the intricate hand sewn designs along the collar, sleeves, hem and waist. By brightly colored I mean teals, bright pinks, yellow, orange, reds, greens. I have occasionally seen naguas in pastels or patterned materials...but that is rare. I have been told that this style of dress dates back to the arrival of religious missionaries who taught the Ngöbe Bugle that it was better to dress modestly. Before that time the Ngöbe Bugle wore less covering clothing (cooler in this climate).

Thanks to Patrick for the videos, I did not have my camera in the room...so he shared with me.

Each dance has a specific name, just as each design on their dresses has a name...but the name for this on was in Ngöbera and it did not stick to my English -bound brain.

The above dance was called the Drunkard, and as I am writing this post on a day in the middle of carnival, I can say that there is some real resemblance to drunken dancing

The above dance, the only one executed in a circle, was called the Monkey. The volunteers that you see in the videos live in Ngöbe communities and were included just like all the Ngöbe Bugle in the room in the dance. It was pretty cool. I will be doing another PML seminar at the end of March...so I will look for more interesting culture to share with you.

Long shot job

As we move under six months remaining in our Peace Corps service, everyone (friends, family, fellow PCVs, our bosses, ourselves) is asking, "What are you doing next?"

We've been discussing (there is a lot of time for talking when the sun goes down by 6:30 and you don't have electricity) grad school, the National Park Service, organic farms in Vermont, applying our tropical island agriculture experience in Hawai'i, and numerous other crazy schemes, including returning to Maryland. And we try to keep an eye on the jobless rate in the states too, because while the pay isn't great, an extension in Peace Corps is a job that provides enough to live on.

But the current iron in the fire, if we were to get really lucky, would take us from "the toughest job you'll ever love" to "the best job in the world"? (Google those two terms and the top hits will explain the jobs.)

So, after staying up way to late to finish up the last details, here is my application for "the best job in the world". Turn on the sound.

If you want to see some of other 14,000 applicants they've supposedly gotten, try http://www.islandreefjob.com/. To see my video, look under the country of Panama (this post was written before they had approved my video, so I couldn't provide a link). The close date for applying is 22 Feb (hmmm, that's today; I guess I scheduled the posting of this blog just right so that you couldn't read it, apply, and bump me out of the running :) and they will announce the final 50 videos on 2 March, so check back then to see if I made it!

The island at night

We currently are lucky enough to have a lot of visitors coming down to see us. Both family and friends are visiting in the December to Febuary time frame. We plan to post about thier adventures later...and invite them to contribute thier thoughts as well.

For those of you who are not so lucky...the following video is a taste of what it is like to visit us. When you watch it you can imagine that you are sitting on our porch, just after dusk and are watching the lightning bugs and listening to the insects. If you have a good imagination you can also feel the warm light summery breeze that is common during the evening.

We took the video mostly because it is interesting (to us at least) that the lightning bugs tend to almost be synchronized at times. There are moments of blackness followed by slow undulating pulses of lightning bug flashes. It is lovely.

Working together can make anything fun

I thought that you might like this video. It is a clear example of one of the wonderful things about being a Peace Corps volunteer...how much fun we can have together and still get things done.

Let me first set the stage...this was taken on Thanksgiving day after dinner. These three wonderful volunteers are cleaning ALL of the dishes from a Thanksgiving meal for 70 people, and yet they manage to have a ball. When the video starts they do not know that I am taking a video...I tell them at the end (you can tell when they realize from the laughter).

We don't get to work together all that often, but when we do there is amazing energy and willingness to chip in and get the work done. I think that this is the type of comradery and team feeling that I hope to have in all my jobs. How many people do you know that could be this cheerful faced with that many dishes?

Panamanian wins Latin American Idol

Panamanians had a celebration to beat the band when Margarita Henriquez was announced as the winner of Latin American Idol on October 10th. Because we live in an area without much electricity, and because we don't watch much TV, I didn't know what was going on when it was announced. I was in Santiago, at a friend's house when the car horns started honking, and the yelling and the fireworks added to the general noise of celebration...celebration that continued for hours. Dancing in the streets would be a realistic way to describe the scene in many areas of Panama.
Panamanians were so excited that the volume of cell phone traffic was enough to overwhelm the cellular tower capabilities and cell phone systems collapsed...and were not fully returned to service in some rural area (meaning my house) for 2 days. The press conference held when she returned to Panama was carried live on several television networks....interrupting popular novelas (evening soap operas). However, her victory did not result in a national day off like the Olympic gold medal winner's.

Nineteen Central and South American countries participated in the contest. The two finalists competing were from Panama and Costa Rica...raising the tension with some friendly neighborhood rivalry. If you would like to see her sing, and she can belt it out, check out this youtube video:

Margarita's last Latin American Idol song

Starfish are Cool

(Kevin uploaded the pictures, but this is April's story you are reading.)

Well, if you are going to be jealous of our time in Panamá, now is a good moment to do so...we just spent a week snorkeling in one of the most beautiful places in Pamaná, an area called Comarca Kuna Yala.



The word comarca signifies that the area is a semi-autonomous region of Panamá that is populated by one of the several indiginous peoples of Panama, in this case the Kuna Indians. Kuna Yala is also known as the San Blas Islands...this being the name it was given in Spanish colonial times. But the Kuna who live there prefer and use the name Kuna Yala for the region.



In many ways the Kuna are very protective (rightfully so) and controlling of what a tourist can do and where they can go and how...but it is the picture of paradise (literally some of the tropical paradise photos you have seen are from Kuna Yala.) Kuna Yala is an area of beautiful coasts, white sand, coconut trees and water so clear that I could see my toes clearly when I was in water shoulder deep. It is said to be home to some of the world´s best snorkeling...I don´t have enough experience to know if it was the world´s best...but it was fun enough to keep me swimming for hours each day for 6 days.





In our snorkeling search for colorful coral and lots of fish, we also found some white sand dollars the size of dinner plates and big starfish. We saw lots of starfish, many different kinds and colors. The above photo is of some starfish that we found in about 12 feet of water. They tend to crawl along the bottom slowly looking for food. They were numerous and easy to borrow for a photo prop. Or to just play with for about half an hour, as April did in shallow water near one island.

When you first pick up a star fish it pulls in all of its tenticles and goes all rigid in your hand. It seems as if it is not capable of moving. But if you have a bit of patience eventually the animal will start to put out its tenticles and feel around. On their underside they have a line of tenticles that run along the middle of each leg, going from the tip to the center of the star. Their mouth is located at the center where the 5 lines of tenticles meet. Each tenticle has a suction cup type tip for grabbing things, and aiding movement.


When the starfish is not holding itself stiff for protection, it is suprisingly soft and yielding to the touch...kind of like incredably thick velvet, but with armory bumps sprinked in the pattern. It is easy to see the bumps, but if you are patient and have a keen eye for observation you can also see little velvety sensors on the upper surface of the starfish that help them perceive and respond to touch stimuli.

For those who are interested enough to wait (it is a bit like watching turtles move...takes a real interest and lack of hurry), starfish are quite flexible. They are capable of folding almost in half to turn themselves over or to go over the edge of a surface (like the edge of my hand). They conform their shape to the surface that they are on and move with undulations of the hundreds of sucker tipped tenticles.

In the below video you can see the tenticals moving pretty clearly.



(Watch the starfish suckers move him along Kevin's hand)

We also saw lots of types of corals including fan corals, vase corals, brain corals and many others that I don’t know. We saw itty bitty colorful fish in all the nature video colors, and big fish with all sorts of colors too. We saw big schools of blue fish and others of yellow fish and grey fish. One fish, two fish, red fish blue fish....

We saw many schools of minnow sized fish where the school had to number in the hundreds of thousands of fish...you could be in the middle of the school and have a hard time seeing out of the school for all the fish and flashes of sun from their bodies. We also saw anemones, sea cucumbers, lobsters, conch (brought a big one back to the hotel and had it for lunch the next day), crabs, sea grass and pelicans.

One thing I don’t mind not ever seeing again was a small school of Barracuda. They were making me nervous, so I popped up to the boat where our guide was following us through an off shore reef and had the following conversation:

me- Are barracuda dangerous?


him- How big is it? (spreading his hands shoulder wide as an example)

me- (thinking...this conversation is not going the way I had hoped) This big. (spreading my hands to about 4 feet wide)

him-Oh...how many are there?

me- (thinking...I really am not being reassured at all by these questions) 4 or 5 of them.

him- Oh. (what felt to me like a long pause for thought here) They will just go away.

me- I am not seeing very many fish here.


him-They are probably hiding from the barracuda. Barracuda are brava. (brava is a word most often used with animals, and can have many context driven tones or connotations...but usually means mad or aggressive)

me-(thinking....If I see them again I think I will be ready to hide like the other fish!)

Of course, we did fine...we didn’t snorkel in that area for long. I am glad to have seen barracuda, but don’t feel a particular need to see them again. We had a great time snorkeling...can’t wait to go again.

Can you see the two starfish that are in the above photo?

Working the Rice

We recently visited our first host family again, in the south of the island, to spend a night, chat and generally socialize. That evening, we taught them a popular card game we called ONE (or, as it is known to most of you, UNO). But in the afternoon, before dinner, the rice needed to be pilar-ed, or husked.

This is how Paula and Ancelmo work together to pilar arroz. You don't get to see Paula and Kevin trying it, because it just didn't work nearly as smoothly together. Kevin's claim is that the pilon (bowled-out wooden stand carved from a tree trunk in which the rice is placed to be struck to remove the husk) was too short for him. We will let you draw your own conclusions as to if it was likely equipment size issues or user issues.

The pounding of the mano de pilon or hand of the pilon (wooden pole part) into the rice breaks up the husk of the rice grains. They then scoop the rice grains and pour them from a hieght back into the pilon...and the breaze blows the husks out of the mix. There are machines that can do this...but many people do it by hand in our area due to cost and transport issues. This is the last step to process rice before cooking it.

(For more on the pilar-ing process, check back to our November 2007 post with pictures of the steps: http://ak-panama.blogspot.com/2007/11/work-of-pilaring.html)

What is your commute like?

How do you get to work? How do you get home? We thought that you might like to to see how PVCs get to and from their communities, so below is a good first example.

Foy and Jeff are another couple from our group. They live in a community east of Panama City, the only volunteers from our group on that side. From the "hub" town in their area, they have about an hour and a half ride in a chiva, the pickup truck with a caged back and hard roof. The chivas tend to have two hard benches along the sides for passengers. This is the only regular transport into their small village (other than 2-3 private vehicles that go up to their area) and all the local families use it regularly.

A full chiva will typically have 6 adults on each bench, some kids in the laps of the adults, a couple of people sitting on the mound of cargo in the center of the truck bed between all the knees. Also, there will be people hanging off the back bunper...and they tend to get a bit muddy. More cargo (and occasionally people) go on top of the chiva roof. Chickens, other animals, large sacks of grain, propane tanks, and construction materials are all common cargo.

This video shows the view and the chiva. Looks almost like the Metro in DC.

Most chiva rides last anywhere from a 1/2 hour to 4+ hours. When the roads are bad the passengers will have to get out and walk until the truck clears the worst of the mud. It is also not unusual for a chiva to cross rivers high enough for the water to seep in the truck bed at the back end.

Stay tuned for other interesting commutes....

Snakes alive? (Video)

I feel a bit like a bad luck charm for snakes...there are few snakes that see islanders and live to tell the tale.

I find that people on the island seem to have more fear than knowledge about wildlife in general and snakes in particular. They tend to kill every snake that they see and many of the animals too. Every time they kill a snake they look at its mouth and head. They are curious about the snakes but fearful of them. They assume that it is venomous even when it is clearly a boa that kills by constriction.

Recently our neighbors encountered a 7-foot boa in the vacant house nearby, chopped its head with a machete, and carried it by our house on their way to dispose of it by the shore. We asked to see it, and then we talked about why snakes don't all have to be killed. We used the opportunity to talk about what this snake eats and how often and what alternatives they have to killing it. We also talked about how to tell a venomous snake from a non-venomous snake.

Since the snake's head was only split, and the snake was clearly responsive to stimulous and still writhing 20 to 30 minutes after they'd hit it, we chopped the head off to end (our feelings for) its pain. This video was taken probably 20 to 30 minutes after that. All the motion you see is after beheading and is reflexive.

You can see from the video that it was a large snake...more than 4 inches wide at its widest point. It showed all the distinticve signs of being a boa: squarish and stout muscular body that doesn't taper much before the tail, narrow slightly bulbus head, and sets of small inward pointing teeth...no big fangs for venom. In my experience, most people do not have enough knowledge to look for these traits. Seeing the differences is the first step towards thinking about whether or not to kill a snake.

When our neighbor Elvis touches the snake in the video it is likely the first time that he has touched a moving (even if dying) snake; he touched it after seeing me do so first, before that he touched it only with a stick. It is my hope that conversations like this one will result in the future in them coming to get me to show me a live snake...maybe even a snake that could be lucky enough to survive the viewing.