The Curious and the Marvelous

Night had descended on the Chachagua Rainforest as our small crew assembled.  Our group consisted of a young couple, a mother-daughter pair from Atlanta, a mysterious former bodybuilder who Nancy thought might be an online reviewer, I thought might be a bodybuilder in recovery, and Sarah thought might have been a teacher/blogger gathering anecdotes for his March slicing challenge.  Oh wait, that was me.  In any case, he was quiet…too quiet.  Hector, the guide for our night hike, distributed flashlights.  He looked dubiously at the footwear of the mother-daughter pair.  Mom was from India.  She brushed off his concern with a wave.  No need to worry.

I have done a lot of hiking, but almost never at night.  Twice, at Nature’s Classroom, I’d walked with kids, with no flashlights, for about ten minutes, after which, we crunched wintergreen lifesavers in our wide open mouths, while a partner marveled at the oral fireworks.  Hector seemed more professional. I did not expect him to partake of this gimmick.

It had rained over the previous hours, so the ground was soggy and the leaves were drippy, but no rain fell as we tramped into the woods.  Within minutes, Hector had spotted “something very curious,” a tiny frog, not much bigger than a dime.  He’d somehow spotted it on a leaf by the side of the path we’d been following.  His flashlight must have been much more potent than mine.  Moving closer for a better view, I positioned my face about six inches from the fallen leaves before I actually spotted the tiny creature.  I do not remember the “very curious” fact that Hector shared, perhaps because I was so concerned with actually locating the little fellow (the frog, not Hector).  

We were not more than 50 yards past the tiny frog when the nine-year-old girl with the confident-if-inadequately-shod mom spotted something moving among the undergrowth.  She pointed excitedly with her flashlight and bent toward the spot.  Hector halted and circled back to see what she’d found.  “Oh yes!  Very good!  Very good spotting.  This is something very curious!  It’s the blue jean frog.”

Never  having seen a frog in jeans, I hustled toward the little crowd.  Sure enough, caught in the spotlight, was a tiny frog with blue legs and a bright red back.  “Oh, that looks like a poison dart frog,” I said.

“Yes,” Hector responded, “Americans like to call it that.  We call it ranita roja, which just means, umm, red frog.  But others like to call it the blue jean frog.  Look at his legs.  Very curious.”

Hector went on to explain how the frog had a poison in its skin that resulted from its diet of ants and mites.  “The poison has an effect on the heart of anything that ingests it.  It stops the heart very quickly.  Very curious.”

Excited as I was to see this well-dressed exotic and dangerous creature, I was also marveling at (and envying) the eyesight of the nine-year-old.  How did she see that tiny thing, even if it did have a bright red back?  It turns out, when it came to spotting, I hadn’t seen anything yet.

Over the course of the next two hours, Hector and the nine-year-old engaged in an epic competition to see who could spot more creatures. Hector, the seasoned veteran, experienced in the sighting of all things “very curious,” may have had to raise his game to match the upstart youth from Atlanta. 

In most cases the rookie could only point and shout, “I think I found something.”  We left it to Hector to name it and find the curious.  I don’t remember who spotted the pair of motmots resting in the shelter of a low tree branch, or the abandoned hummingbird nest or the leaf-cutter ants or the incredible spider webs.  The girl spotted a plant hopper, which I would have thought was a leaf. Hector spied the head of a turtle poking out of the pond.  I would have thought it was a stick…until it started swimming.  We didn’t wait for it to resurface, because Hector had informed us of something very curious:  this turtle can go two hours underwater on one gulp of air.  I now feel slightly less proud of having swum two lengths of my in-law’s pool underwater.

I must admit, I felt a little badly for Hector, but then I felt even worse for another creature.  Toward the end of our hike, the eagle-eyed girl again found a hopping creature on a rock by the side of a stream.  “Ooh, a frog!” she yelled.  Hector rushed quickly to her side.  “What kind is that one?” she asked eagerly.

Now, I don’t know if Hector was tiring of little Sherlock’s finds, or if this is just the sad truth, but he bent down, studied the frog for a moment, and then replied, “Oh, that’s just an ordinary frog.”  Apparently he was out of very curious facts.

As the hike concluded and we handed back our flashlights, I was left to wonder at the amazing variety of rainforest species, the enthusiasm and knowledge of our intrepid guide, and the superpowers of youth.

I still don’t know the bodybuilder’s story.

Young Eagle-Eye’s first sighting. I still can barely see it.

One of Sherlock’s other detections.

She found this plant hopper, too.

The Fashion Assassin

The Ordinary Frog

The snoozing motmot

The web designer

Video of leaf cutters at work. A “very curious” thing: They bring leaves to their home to cultivate a fungus that they eat exclusively.

• Slice of Life