At Play in the Jungles of the Lord

Part II — Shushupe!

By Major L. Boddicker

Six a.m. at San Martin, Peru was cool and eerie with faint light shafting through the forest. The bird and herptile (the study of snakes, frogs, and lizards) crews were on the trails at 5:30 a.m. I did not see much point of going out that early, so we stayed in camp until after breakfast and there was enough light in the forest to get photographs if we did find something.

The routine of the San Martin camp quickly fell into place. I was up at 6 a.m. for cleanup, breakfast at 7 to 7:30, line out the gear, water, and help between 7:30 and 7:45, and hit the trail at 7:45. On the trail we looked for mammals and sign, established scent posts, set traps, and occasionally called until 11 – 11:30 a.m., then hiked back to camp. Lunch was welcome, particularly the cold juice and drinks. From 12:30 – 2:00 p.m. we usually took a siesta, and then we went back out on the trail. Rain would interrupt the routine. Sometimes I took breaks to catch up with my field notes and to rig equipment rather than siesta, but generally, the routine was followed. Dinner was at 6:30 – 7:30 p.m., after which I went to the lab to visit, to record my findings, and to handle specimens. I was in deep sleep by 10 p.m.

The bat and herptile guys would often go out at night. The number and types of bats in the Amazon jungle is incredible. The herptile guys, who were out at night hunting bushmasters and fer-de-lance snakes, are generally nuts.

The first morning at San Martin was exciting. Federico and I hiked down the trail and checked the traps and scent stations, anticipating something in all of them. Wrong! In 12 National traps, 24 Victor rat traps, 24 Victor mouse sets, and 20 scent circles, we caught one spiny rat and a mouse. The baits were gone, eaten by ants and termites. The Q-tips held up fairly well. We had tracks of one Brazilian cottontail rabbit on one scent station; that was it.

During the afternoon, I was assigned another Indian, José Tenteyo Pereya, to help Federico and me. Federico was about to take a week’s break, leaving José to assist me. Both Indians were excellent hunters and woodsmen. They moved through the jungle like cats, knew the plants and animals as one would expect from men who make their livings from it. It was home to them, and they were amused at how much work it was for us. They laughed at how we were interested in such mundane things and made such hard work out of everything. I wondered about that myself.

Federico and José had excellent senses and were totally at home in the jungle. It was interesting to watch them test the breeze for odors, cup their hands around their ears to listen, and read the morning news in the mud and dust. For a fat gringo, I am pretty good at that myself, but do not compare with these Indians. They took great pains to show me how good they were. Both took great delight in showing me things I had missed, and I was totally happy to do the same to them. It got to be a great game as to who could out-do the other. Trappers and hunters like us have a special brotherhood nobody else has, and it extends to everywhere I have been. I got really fond of these men. We got so we could carry on sort of a pigeon Spanish/Indian/English communication liberally helped with our own sign language.

The looks on their faces at what I was doing and teaching them were amusing. They thought I was nuts. Carman’s lures were a joke to them. The circles of dirt were a mystery that they did not understand. If we needed to know what animals were there, just ask them. How many animals of each per square kilometer? Ask them, they knew, and it would save us a lot of time. I agreed and did ask them, but more proof is required for the Smithsonian.

We spent the first two days setting one dozen each of #0, #2, and #4 Gregerson snares, 6 #110 Conibears, 6 #1½ padded jaw traps, 2 Sterlings, and 2 #220 Conibears. We set up a total of 32 scent post circles. Great care was taken to not catch ocelots, jaguar, cougar, monkeys, or other species that were on the CITES list or protected by Peruvian law. That puzzled the Indians, for they wanted to catch everything.

To give you an idea of how far from civilization these Indians were, I handed them a pair of pliers and baling wire, and they did not have a clue about how to use them. Federico caught on quickly, but José was frustrated and impatient with both. I would demonstrate how to set the snares and traps, including the wire wraps. They would partially set up the wire, but without fail, I would have to check their set-ups and tie up the wire. When I did not, the snare was not tied down. Leghold traps really excited them. They had heard of them but had never seen one.

They could not set a 110 Conibear. They did not have the hand strength to depress the spring. We would repeatedly go over it, to their and my frustration. I finally would set the 110’s and 220’s, they would then place them. Placing the traps was done very well by both men.

In the jungle, it was easy to get lost. Below the equator, the sun is in the wrong place, when you can see it. The trees and brush look different coming back, you see the other side. The trails however, become very obvious, firstly because we continually chopped plants away from them, and secondly the foot traffic cut ruts in the slimy soil. To keep from getting lost and to mark our equipment so I could find it, I tied up a lot of blaze orange surveyor’s tape. José called it “gringo’s flowers” and took it as an insult that I used it when he was guiding me.

Federico had a great attitude and held steady all the way. José was impatient and thought the whole exercise was boring and beneath him. He did not take correction well no matter how it was offered. However, we managed.

A serious problem showed up immediately for me. There were only two short trails. The Smithsonian crew did not want to leave the trails, and we were restricted to ranging out only a few kilometers. That meant that all of the ornithologists, herpetologists, mammalogists, and sundry scientists were tromping the same trails from 5 a.m. until 12 a.m. which discouraged the movement of large mammals into the traps and scent stations. After several days of that frustration, Federico, José, and I revised the large mammal survey trails.

José was a powerfully built man who was a wizard with a machete. Whacking through the bamboo seemed almost effortless to him. Federico was good too, but he was 16 years older than José and 13 years younger than I. Therefore, it is easy to conclude who cut the most new trail.

We would line out on a ridge which snaked up into the jungle, choosing our way along, chopping open a trail about 4 feet wide and five feet tall. José usually was in the lead, Federico following, and I brought up the end, taking out the smaller plants and extending the height of the trail. We could cut about 100 yards per hour on average. Breaking into new areas was extremely interesting. Sometimes the new sight was an exquisite new flower, or a beautiful frog, snake, or bird. We stumbled on a spring and waterfall, which was a frequent lair of ocelot.

When José would get tired, particularly if it was close to lunch or dinnertime, he would want to quit. I agreed and sent him back to camp, and Federico and I would continue to open trail. José decided that was not going to work so he stuck with the trail cutting until I called it quits for the day. José was a chief, and he wanted to be the boss.

Of course, once we had new trails opened up, all of the other scientists wanted to use them; and being a nice guy, I let them. The longer trails spread the human use load over a larger area, and we immediately started getting hits on the scent posts and other equipment after the trail extension.

As José, Federico, and I put out the scent posts, I tried to explain what I was doing. They use baits for their snare and cage traps, but normally used a fish, bird, or some large food item. Lures as we use them were unfamiliar to them, and they were skeptical. José complained about it being a boring waste of time.

About the fourth day, as we worked down the trail for the morning run, we spotted a large ocelot’s tracks in the mud of the trail, walking toward the scent posts. When it got to the scent circles, it walked over, smelled, rolled, rubbed, then laid down on Canine Call, Bobcat Gland, and Pro’s Choice circles. The looks on José’s and Federico’s faces were of disbelief. “Tigrillo grande” was the comment. The guys picked up the Q-tips and smelled them. I showed them where I would set leghold traps and snares around the circles. They wanted to set traps immediately, but we were not supposed to catch ocelots. We rebuilt the scent circles and moved on.

At the next set of circles, a bull tapir had walked up and smelled Pro’s Choice, and pushed the Q-tip into the sand with its nose. My Indian friends were now impressed. When the circles had all been checked that day, we had tracks of five species: common agouti, red brocket deer, common opossum, ocelot, and tapir. Things were beginning to fall into place.

The routine was fairly easy: after breakfast and a bãno break, we walked ¼ mile across the drilling pad, then dropped quickly into the jungle. From 8 to 11 a.m., we would check traps and snares, read the scent circles and touch them up, then we would hike into the jungle and look for animals and sign.

José and Federico were excellent at hearing animals in the undergrowth and maneuvering to get us a look. We spotted collared peccary, red brocket deer, white fronted capuchin monkeys, brown capuchin, red howler, squirrel, and black spider monkeys over the next few days. Several species of monkeys were called in. José and Federico were excellent callers using their voices and various hand movements. Game and predator calling to them is an everyday skill. The Crit'R•Call fascinated them, and they wanted one immediately. I gave each a Standard call, and they quickly mastered using it.

The snares were placed in small mammal trails, which looked fresh and used; however, we caught nothing. The snares were set with very fine triggers, but they remained in place day after day, undisturbed.

About day eight, we caught a common opossum. The common ‘possum is a regular looking opossum, somewhat smaller than our Virginia opossum, but it smells and acts the same. It was in a National livetrap and covered by hundreds of mites, ticks, fleas, lice, and sundry other vermin. The ants were eating it alive as well. I euthanized it humanely with the usual trapper methods, and then I hung it from a long pole with a snare to carry it back to camp to avoid mites and ticks on my Indian friends and me.

We had a parasitologist in camp, Ricardo Guerrero. He is a famous parasitologist and mammalogist in South America and has written many journal articles on the creatures that live in and on other creatures. He was happy to get the ‘possum and extracted the bugs and worms from it. Sergio Solari, a mammalogist from the Peru Museum of Natural History, made a study skin out of the critter.

My thought throughout the experience was: I will never admit I flew 4500 miles from home to South America and in eight days of trapping have caught only one opossum!

The next catch quickly followed. José spotted a trail coming down to a stream and wanted to move a snare to it. “Añuje” was his word for common agouti, a common food item for the Mechiguenga Indians, which he said was using the trail. I approved the move and luckily followed up his snare placement. He had forgotten to attach the snare wire. He never quite figured that out. The next evening, as we prepared for dinner, we could hear the Indian workers yelling and talking to Antonio, a Yaminahua Indian friend of Federico who had been out with the bird people.

They had been spotting birds along our trail and stumbled on the snared agouti, dead, freshly caught and in good shape. The roughnecks in camp now decided I might have some value and from then on were better disposed toward the Indians and me.

The agouti is much like a huge jackrabbit. Being a vegetarian, it is clean and has nutritious meat. They were among the most common of animals in the area. We found their tracks and sign in all the places we looked.

Ricardo Guerrero, the parasitologist, went through it for worms and insect parasites. The carcass was then taken to the kitchen and prepared for anyone who wanted to eat it. They saved a large section of backstrap for me. The texture and flavor of the meat was like a tough old jackrabbit.

Ricardo sat day after day picking mites, ticks, fleas, nematode worms, cestode worms, and flukes out of and off of bats. The ‘possum and agouti were welcome breaks from his monotony of working on bats.

On day six, Federico and I were hiking up a shallow stream looking at tracks in the mud. He was intently studying a set of tapir tracks when I looked over at him and noticed a large snake crawling into a hole in a tree about five feet from his head. That snake had about four feet of the tail left wiggling outside the tree. I called to him and pointed to the snake. He jumped and was about to chop off the tail with the machete when I stopped him. I wanted the whole snake. Federico did not seem too concerned. We did not attempt to get the snake out of the tree, and neither he nor I recognized what kind of snake it was.

José and I were out on the eighth day, quite early in the morning. I was feeling somewhat better after five bad days of diarrhea. As we trudged through the jungle, we looked for birds and animals for the other scientists, since they were helping us.

Along one part of the lowland trail was a very thick area of forest through which a stream ran. For about 50 yards, we would have to semi crawl under the vegetation to get to a more open area and check scent stations. Crawling through vegetation there meant a constant flow of insect life onto one’s neck and back, which had to be brushed off. There was a big ant that bit, and when the poor human was bitten, it meant three days of serious fever. A small ant also was abundant. When it bit, the sensation was like one had rolled in stinging nettles. Fortunately, I skipped the big ant bite; the small ants could not be avoided.

I crawled out of the tunnel of vegetation, stood up to brush off the bugs, and looked over to my left up a small tributary to the main stream. Two large snakes were doing a mating ritual, slowly winding together straight up in the air. Graceful, like a ballet dance, they slowly twisted up, and then twisted down into the shallow water. I whispered to José and pointed to the snakes.

He instantly became excited and in a low voice with lots of power said, “Shushupe!” It was the Indian word for poisonous bushmaster and fer-de-lance snakes, and the Indians do not like them. These snakes kill the Indians rather frequently.

My machete came out and I started forward toward the snakes, since the herpetologists were very interested in any and all snakes for museum specimens.

José grabbed my arm and stopped me, repeating: “Shushupe. Pelegroso.” (Poison snakes, dangerous.)

Unfortunately, we had some difficulty discussing the issue in detail, but he was genuinely afraid of these snakes. I pantomimed cutting a long forked stick to pin down the snakes, and then whack them with the machete. He gave me his “you idiot gringo” look, then pulled his machete and went looking for a pole.

The snakes were aware of us, stopped the mating dance, and lay in the shallow water looking at us from about 20 feet away. Not knowing what shushupe looked like, they just looked like two very long and slender snakes to me. One was eight feet long, the other about seven feet. Both were about 3 ½ inches in diameter.

José cut an 8-foot pole about 3 inches in diameter. We both held it and approached the snakes. The pole was moved over the largest snake, and then forcefully brought down on its head. The other snake tried to move away and I went after it with my machete. José again yelled, “Shushupe!” and looked at me with disbelief that I would be so crazy. He motioned for me to get back on the pole. So, we repeated the poling of the second snake.

José was still unwilling to approach the stunned snakes, so I carefully walked up to them and gave them a coup de grace to the back of the heads with the dull side of my machete. That put José at ease, and we congratulated each other and took a minute to catch our breath and wits. The encounter was a real rush!

I picked up the largest snake, grasping it behind the head, and we looked for fangs. Two very nasty looking fangs, which curled backward, lay on each side of the upper jaw. At that point, I was very suspicious about the snakes being shushupes. There were no pits under the eyes, the head shape was wrong for pit vipers and the fangs were not adapted for striking and injection. Regardless, these were valuable specimens.

The snakes’ heads were cinched up in a snare and attached to a short pole (palo), and then we hiked back to camp. When we broke out into the construction area, many of the Peruvians came on the run to see the snakes, shushupe. They examined and marveled at them.

One of the Peruvian guys came over to me and asked, “Shushupe? Nada (no). Boa." José heard that and insisted it was a shushupe. So, I did not argue. The herpetologist confirmed my suspicions and proclaimed the snakes were rainbow boa constrictors. The snake man, Joe Mitchell, was elated, like a little kid with the Christmas present he had wanted.

José had lost a bit of face and stood back dejected. I walked up to him, put my hand on his shoulder and said: "Muchos gracias amigo. Dos serpentio grande, excellente. Vamoose.” (Two large snakes, excellent, now let’s go!) That perked him up.

José and I left the snakes and headed back out on the trail to check the traps. The ants, termites, and wasps were aggravating to say the least. Every bait was completely eaten every day. The only exception was Q-tips full of Carman lures, which stayed active for 3–5 days if it did not pour rain. We put baits in plastic pill bottles and bags, which helped. The heat and humidity caused meat baits to rot quickly.

Mice and smaller creatures were quickly killed and eaten by insects; small creatures were killed by the traps and immediately consumed and/or decomposed so they were useless as museum specimens within a few hours. That meant frequent checking of traps, twice per day. The success rate of trapping and snaring continued to be incredibly low.

Scent posts provided great results. Calling monkeys was very productive, but we had little success at seeing anything else that showed up at our calling stands. Day after day, we trudged the jungle trails trying every trick we knew to find and identify large mammals.

Sign was everywhere. Tracks, feeding signs on leaves, seeds, fruits, holes in the ground and in termite mounds, scuffs on tree bark, and territorial calls of monkeys echoed through the jungle. Scats or carcasses were difficult to find because insects immediately ate them.

Methodically, I put together a long list of large mammals, and my camera clicked and flash lighted the jungle gloom, recording evidence to bring home to verify the records. As far as protocol and plan for a formal biodiversity large mammal survey plan, I did not have a clue. It was all I could do to get trails cut, lures and traps out, and hike 6–10 kilometers per day. Why? Diarrhea. Everyone had it to some degree, even the Indians. It got to be the central theme of life at San Martin. The passport to temporary bliss was toilet paper that was always close at hand. The heat and humidity weighed heavy on the mind and body. The stress of the steep hills and constant bugs, watching for big poisonous snakes, frustrations of not speaking Spanish, and inability to communicate, were all difficult. Nevertheless, the diarrhea just choked off the energy for each day.

The doctor would give me one pill of antibiotic to knock down the infection, then nothing for three days. The reasoning was that if I was going to work there, I needed to get used to the bacteria there. The way to get used to it was to outlive the diarrhea and get used to the bacteria.

So, the pill would help, but not cure the problem. Good days and bad days came and went. Dehydration, which was a problem by itself, was compounded by the constant ejection of body fluids. Sometimes it felt like body parts were leaving my body too. Stomach cramps, cold sweats, and stomach swelling and pain were constants each day. So, what did I do about it? I got up each day, popped a couple of Pepto Bismol tablets, drank a quart of water with salt and baking soda in it, ate a light breakfast, recharged the toilet paper, made a visit to the thunderbox, and went hiking. Everyone just carried on and did their work. I drank at least 1½ gallons of liquids per day.

After 12 days, there was little point of continuing to trap so we pulled the stakes and traps and closed out the scent post lines. Federico was on leave. I had two days left at San Martin before we moved to a different camp. It was time to explore.

About the 10^th day, while we were checking scent posts, I had that feeling that José and I were being watched. I could not hear or see anybody, just felt it. At one particularly gloomy spot where we had four scent posts, I squatted down to get a photo of an ocelot track. As I got up, I looked in the sand and mud to my right and looking back at me was a bare human footprint. My first reaction was one of our Indian guides had taken off his knee boots to give his feet a cool rest. In fact, it was a track of a Mechiguenga Indian who was following and watching us.

As I moved over to check the next scent post, there were the tracks again. The person squatted and looked at the Q-tip, tracks, and sign of the ocelot responding to the lure. I wondered what he was thinking. Maybe that a gringo witch doctor was invading his forest and angering the Gods. At the time, I did not think enough of it to bring it to José’s attention.

The day before I was transferred to Armihuari, José and I quickly hiked to the end of the survey trail and struck out into new country. This trail ended at a larger stream about 1½ miles from where I had seen the human tracks. The stream was clear and cool and ran slowly through the jungle. We had knee-boots on but waded in to our waists to avoid trees and rocks. The orifice fish cannot get through G.I. khakis and underwear, so we felt fairly safe. José took the lead and we both worked the banks slowly from side to side looking for sign. We found new things: nutria is the Mechiguenga name for southern river otter. There is a water opossum there that lives like a muskrat but eats fish, snails, and insects. Paca, a black and white spotted rodent about the size of a raccoon, frequently left tracks in the mud. Red brocket deer and collared peccary ate ripe figs that had fallen into the stream and collected at the sandbars.

Then I saw the human tracks again. José and I got a message we did not like painted in mud on the bank: “Go no further.” We did not go back to that place; José had an excuse.

So the last day at San Martin I stayed in the lab in front of a fan, wrote up notes, and prepared my traps and gear for the move. My poor old body needed a rest anyway.

Before I left for San Martin, I did some research on South American mammals. According to a book, Neotropical Rain Forest Mammals by Louise Emmons, there were potentially 58 mammal species the size of a cottontail rabbit or larger. In the 12 days I spent tromping around the jungle at San Martin, I had found tangible evidence or sighted 25 species. That was much better than anyone expected.

Back to home page