Turneffe Tales Left Untold: Part 3

Other Curious Critters:

Wish-Willy

"Just don't trip!"Alton and I would joke about walking behind the kitchen at the field station. Why? The Wish Willies. At times they were a dozen strong and they looked hungry. Like a pack of dogs, they were waiting for scraps tossed their way. I don't think that there are many reports of indiscriminate spiny-tailed iguanas attacks, but scraps that fell their way didn't last long and not everyone was getting fed. At night, you were safe. The Wish Willies would escape to the trees to wait for day. When they were warmed up and hungry, that's when you need to watch your step. Maybe.


Blue, Green Vine Snakes

That's not blue-green vine snakes. Green vine snakes are fairly common on the islands of Turneffe. They are an amazing hue of green, but some folks in the area have been finding blue, green vine snakes. This picture doesn't do it justice (if anybody out there has a better one, let me know), but you can see that the snake is blue. This variation seems to overlap the green, green vine snake populations but is not found on all of the islands. The folks at the University of Belize field station would see them on Calabash and we found them when we went looking for crocodile and sea turtle nests on Cockroach Caye (see "what washes ashore parts one and two to see what else we found there). There's probably a neat story there that has yet to be told.

Make up your own story about this last critter.