A morning flight out of Costa Rica gave me one extra evening near the airport in Liberia, Costa Rica, to end a family vacation. I went into the coastal thornscrub to see what there was to see, and found a few of these large Central American Lyresnakes. They seem thicker and less likely to bite than the thin, bug-eyed lyresnakes here in the United States. Handling them seems a bit more like it’s a gophersnake or ratsnake in comparison. Unlike those snakes, however … these do have a relatively mild venom, that I would not like to test from one of these big snakes.

