io8 JUNGLE ISLAND 



one it was likely to be very poisonous, and, what 

 was more serious, it would not give warning of 

 attack, as our rattlesnakes do. 



My first snake experience on the Canal Zone 

 came on my first day there. I had gone to the 

 office of a physician in the Ancon hospital to ask 

 when I should begin to take quinine to prevent 

 malaria. He took me into a large adjoining 

 closet to show me some jaguar skulls and bird- 

 skins and I bent over to look. Presently he 

 called my attention to a shelf close to my forehead, 

 and there in the half-darkness lay a live boa 

 constrictor, so large that it was hard for me in 

 my excitement to tell how big it was. Whatever 

 its actual length, it was large enough to swallow 

 full-grown chickens for a meal, though the phy- 

 sician was complaining that he could not get it 

 to eat at all and he was afraid that it would 

 starve. Boa constrictors are, of course, not 

 poisonous and they are seldom dangerous to 

 people or large animals, but the experience left 

 me a little nervous. 



A few days later a physician on the Atlantic 

 side sent me by messenger a can containing, so the 

 label said, two live tree vipers. These are really 

 poisonous snakes, whose lives are spent in trees. 

 They use their slender tails in climbing, as a 

 monkey uses his, clinging to limbs. Sometimes 

 they are found in bunches of bananas which give 

 them an excellent hiding place. 



