dealing with one of the most poisonous snakes in South America

Hello, or should I say good-bye!

this is the right leg of an 11 year
old Ecuadorian boy 2 weeks after equis bite.
(Please Note: effects will vary depending on amount)   

see if you can see the pits underneath it's eyes

We spent the first 2 nights of our adventure in Tena, where we did have internet connection, but we did not have internet deeper in the Amazon for 5 days. 




The second night we were going back to our hotel and found an equis! (A.K.A. Fer-de-lance!) Whose lower body had gotten crushed by a car. The next morning as we were preparing to leave, we found it had dragged itself all the way to the side-walk and to the main entrance of of our hotel where it had obviously just died. Just as our host was about to throw the body into the river that had obviously flooded the nearby houses several times, Yvonne rushes up to him, asks him if he has a bag, and BOOM before I know it I'm carrying around a dead snake body. So I'm lugging the body around now, to the bank, to the bus station, where we ask what time our bus is leaving. But before the bus station however, we stop by 2 tanners and asked them if they could skin it for us.  The first one's excuse is superstitious, saying that it contains poison all the way through. The second one said it was already too rotten. So we end up going to a farmacia and picking up 2 pairs of latex gloves and some hand cleaning alcohol. Then we find a plot of unoccupied land under construction. There Derk whips out his Swiss-army knife and starts skinning it.  I think you all remember the band with the Ecuadorian colors on it that goes around my panama hat? Well now I have a real snake skin one. 

The equis is a type of pit viper, meaning they have distinct pits underneath their eyes. The Fer-de-lance is known to cause 75% of all snake-bite fatalities. Females average at about 6 ft, with males being slightly shorter. Average venom deposit is about 105-124mg, but they have been known to deposit 310-342mg. the lethal amount for a human is 50-62mg. Their scientific name is Bothrops atrox. Their name in french means "lance head" (basically "Iron of 

equis are named for their distinctive X pattern on their backs.

  the lance") If you are bitten, you may get nauseous, paralyzed or simply black out.  They have been known to creep around banana and coffee plantations looking for rodents, where they can lie in wait for hours. The fer-de-lance is a ground snake, but they can also climb and swim. Their color pattern can be olive, brown, tan, grey, yellow, and less likely than not, rusty. They also have a distinct pale yellow chin color. Luckily for them, despite vast destruction of the rain forest, they are nowhere near extinction.    




Our guide Octavio, his mother was all alone in a field, Octavio was at school, and his father was in Tena about an hour away. She was bitten on her finger by an Equis, when she pulled back, the fangs got stuck on her thumb so she chopped off its head with her hatchet.  She managed to get back to the house where she fainted.  Luckily, a neighbor came by to ask something, he was a big man and he carried her to his motorbike and took her one hour to the hospital in Tena.  After that she was in a coma for 10 days. She was lucky to be alive!

Ciao,
Niko