We just finished hosting another group of US college students. A pretty tough bunch, too. Many had never seen the tropics, or lived in a field station, and there was very little whining. They tended to take conditions here well.
I came down to dinner one night and everyone was crowded wide-eyed around one man. He was telling how he had just seen a snake eat a lizard in the shower of the cabin he was staying in. I joined in.
“Do you have a picture?” He produced a smartpone. “Looks like a parrot snake.”
He stared at me pointedly. “Is it poisonous?”
“No, but they tend to bite a lot.”
His look intensified. “Why they call it a parrot snake?”
“I don’t know. They mostly eat lizards.”
“Yeah, I noticed. I just witnessed National Geographic from my bathroom while shaving.”
“Yeah, the cabins have open bathrooms, and sometimes snakes get in. You night have coatis too.”
The guy was a marine, and seemed to take this in stride. The others looked less sure. Some people emerged from their rooms after having found a spider on the wall or a toad in the toilet with expressions you see on combat veterans or surgeons leaving a failed operation. But learning to share space is an important lesson we teach here.
