The Pantanal - Finlay

 

In the pantanal in a pot outside the dining room 

I found a snake!  Mum and Charlie had gone to 

fetch a game to play and I was left at the table 

outside.  I went to put a leaf on the lawn and I 

thought there was a piece of rope in the shrubs 

as I looked at the head of the rope, turned 

its head towards me and hissed. I stared in 

shock at it for a moment and then began 

calling “SNAKE!” Repeatedly. The snake I soon 

learned from the guid (stephan) was called a

 parrot snake. It had no venom, no fangs and 

only grew up to 1 and a bit long ,much to 

mum’s relief. The body of the snake looked 

like rope and its head was a beautiful 

turquoise,green and blue.

In the pantanal mum spotted a jaguar! We were 

going on a driving safari and hadn’t seen much 

when we came to a big dead tree with a dozen 

or so vultures in it . Mum said “is there something 

moving at the bottom of the tree?” I said 

“I think so?” Dad had a look through the 

binoculars and gasped. “It’s, its ,a-a-a, it’s a 

JAGUAR!” The truck stopped and we stared at a

 swishing tale which was all we could see from 

that angle .Slowly the truck drove along the 

side of the glade so we were perfectly in line 

with it. From the angle we could see it was 

eating a dead carcass. It was so big and strong 

even from this distance we could see the 

bulk of it. Victor is a guid got his fancy big 

camera and began taking photos.  After it had 

stripped the carcass to the bone it slowly 

majestically padded off into the jungle.