Marty’s photo of the day #4221: For today’s photo Deb and I go hiking on a rainy night in Costa Rica and find what we are searching for! (Well, at least me.) You’re looking at a fer-de-lance, the deadliest snake in the Western Hemisphere. The fer-de-lance doesn’t have the most potent venom in the Western Hemisphere—a bushmaster beats it for that—but it is difficult to see on the ground. Snakes don’t go out of their way to attack people, but they will defend themselves if stepped on or otherwise disturbed. So the fer-de-lance is tops for killing people in the Western Hemisphere more because of human error than anything else.
Speaking of human error: I wasn’t as close to the fer-de-lance as it looks in the photo. If I was, I might not be typing this.