by Roz Calvert

I travelled 300 miles up the backside of the Amazon with a dozen snake hunters and a good cook. On a riverboat called El Arca (chartered by ecotour operator Green Tracks, and led by tropical biologist and viper authority, Bill Lamar), we made our way from Iquitos, Peru down the Amazon to the meeting of the rivers Maranon and Ucalali. Then, following the Amazonian equivalent of blue highways we lingered on the Nautacana, Rio Tigre, Yrapi, and their oxbow backwaters for seven days of jungle combing.

Day and night we stalked the Fer de Lance, the Anaconda and the Bushmaster; hiking in high forest where it never floods and low forest where water lines from annual flooding marked the tree trunks far above our heads. We slopped through ankle-deep mud; ran from wasps; were marched upon by crowds of stinging army ants; and in the middle of one black night, ran aground with a resounding thud.

Still, I came home from the Amazon rested and refeuled and possibly knowing far more about herps and herpetologists than I truly need to know. I know the Anaconda will snatch the shirt off your back and there are thirty-two stages of tadpole growth. One other thing I know for sure, macho as they may sound, the men who go into the heart of the rainforest in search of the killer Shushupi, and Gergon were the boys

who never, never tore the wings off butterflies.    cont->>>>