I'll set the scene: It's a cool, overcast day in southeast Peru. I was part of a wildlife monitoring project created to study the effects of eco-tourism on wildlife. We walked a few transects after breakfast and found nothing. Instead of going back to the lodge where my comfortable bed and cool shower were the coordinator wanted to check our pitfall trap about a mile away.

The three of us started walking and I was especially mopey, not happy to have to walk an extra mile in the mud just to empty buckets of spiders and ants (which were usually the only things we found in our traps.) I was comfortably zoned-out as I followed Brian, the lead herpetologist's footsteps when suddenly he froze and bent down to put his hand on a snake whose mere size instantly made me think, "Bushmaster!" I tried to yell out a warning as I stepped around him but when I saw the rest of the snake all I could mumble was awestruck jibberish.

He was uninterested in our presence for the most part, and kept poking around in the grass looking for something to eat. This made us believe he was quite docile. Haha! Ten seconds later when we picked him up off the ground we all had a writhing, mouth-open snake lunging at our faces! This is a lifer for me and I couldn't have asked for a more impressive animal. I was fairly nervous in the video for some reason and as you can see it doesn't go quite as easily as I'd hoped. The snake was released after this video was made and sounded like an elephant as it took off through the understory!

Enjoy the video!

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