National Geographic: Land of the Anaconda Page #2

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electric eels and caiman,

he's taking a considerable risk.

When anaconda-hunting,

there's safety in numbers

and colleague John Thorbjarnarson

sometimes joins in.

When you go out, never by yourself

because these animals are big

and they are predators

and you are potential prey.

Two of my assistants

have been attacked by anaconda.

Chukka, look, snake, Chukka.

A protesting Diega is removed

from her refuge.

Fortunately, she's still sluggish

from her meal

and would rather escape than attack.

Wow!

It's beautiful.

Look at those colors.

Diega is not nearly as taken

with Jesus as he is with her.

Renee puts an old sock over

the snake's massive head

to keep the teeth at bay.

Stay!

Stay!

Be good.

This is like mud wrestling.

Previous catches of the day

are getting restless in the truck.

It's time to steer a course for home.

With their home doubling

as their laboratory,

living with snakes has become

a way of life for Renee and Jesus.

I think we can do the female first.

It's eight hundred

and forty-three, right?

Once inside,

they begin processing the snakes.

What number is this?

Eight hundred and what?

Jesus marks each snake with a number.

Renee sketches their tail markings

the anaconda version of a fingerprint.

It's easier than wrestling

snakes in the wild,

but it has its drawbacks too.

Living with snakes basically

is that it stinks.

Literally, it just smells really bad.

They have this musk that smells

if you're not really an expert

it smells just like an animal that's

been rotting for about five days.

And there are times

when we have in the house anywhere

from three to 20 to 25 bags of

snakes sitting around the house

with four drums full of big snakes,

so basically, yeah, it stinks.

Diega measures about 13 feet long

a giant snake,

but by no means the largest.

No one knows how long

an anaconda can get.

The 150-foot monsters described in

Brazilian news accounts

are biologically impossible.

Even the largest trophy skins

don't approach that.

But Jesus's most conservative

estimate still boggles the mind.

This is an animal that can grow

real close to 30 feet.

The weight of an animal of that kind

is something like 1,200 pounds.

We're talking about more than a boar

more than a normal cow.

Now cataloged and fitted

with a transmitter,

Diega is returned to the Ilanos.

Guess about here.

Alright.

Renee and Jesus bid her a

temporary farewell,

hoping that she will successfully mate.

We'll keep in touch.

Yup, we'll be back.

You bet we'll keep in touch.

As the dry season progresses

the heat intensifies

and wildlife traffic jams worsen

in the remaining waterways.

Capybara herds are forced to

congregate in shrinking pools.

And tempers run short among

dominant males with harems to guard.

At the water's edge

a newborn gets a maternal once-over.

But the mother is still in labor

there are more on the way.

The impending birth

has attracted vultures.

But they'll play

an unexpected role here.

Unlikely midwives, they strip the

newborn of its protein-rich placenta,

and squabble over it

leaving the baby free

to take its first labored breaths.

The newborns could use a few minutes

to get their bearings,

but the Ilanos offers no grace periods.

They've been noticed by

a dominant male nearby.

And his interest may not be benign.

This newborn may be the offspring

of the dominant male

or that of an upstart rival.

Scientists have yet to determine

what force now drives him to act.

In a rarely seen display of violence

he passes sentence on the newborns

and appoints himself executioner.

No death goes unnoticed on the Ilanos.

Spectacled caiman bide their time.

Instantly, the vultures shed their

midwife ways for a more familiar role.

Then the caimans lurch ashore

for their share.

An underwater cleanup

crew will get the rest.

Piranhas, drawn as always

to a scene of carnage,

work their grisly magic.

Minutes later, all that remains of

the young capybara are the bones.

In a place where some lifetimes are

measured in minutes,

a lucky survivor clings to its mother.

He may have no more

to fear from his own kind.

But the capybara's enemies

on the Ilanos are many.

It's late afternoon in

the Venezuelan savanna.

Everywhere, anacondas are on the move,

taking advantage of cooler temperatures

to keep up with the receding waters.

Jesus and Renee savor these

last few weeks in the Ilanos.

Soon the rains will come,

making fieldwork virtually impossible.

Work in the Ilanos is really a

unique experience.

You can see the shape of the earth

like an ocean of savannah around you.

You have the feeling that those

animals that are out there

were there before Columbus

arrived to America.

I feel like this is where I belong.

Skimmers grab a

last meal as dusk descends.

The evening slant of light

signals rush hour in the Ilanos,

as the birds head home to roost,

further darkening the

sky with their numbers.

On a riverbank

a jaguar finds his last minutes

of daytime rest plagued by flies.

The big cat needs to rouse

himself soon and find a meal.

Morning finds a

massive female anaconda

looking for an escape

from the rising sun.

The drying river bed exposes muddy

crevices among the roots

cool, damp caves

where a snake might wait out

the last weeks of the dry season.

But the best laid plans of anacondas

are no match for Jesus

and his uncanny knack for

uncovering snake haunts.

This is the domain of an

anaconda named Marion...

an old friend with a

notoriously bad temper.

I think there's a snake here, guys.

Yup, a big one, too.

Big, like Marion big?

Probably, Marion, big, yeah.

If it's Marion,

she'll come straight for me.

She hates me.

Uh oh, she's Marion.

She already snapped at the pole.

She snapped at the pole already.

Renee will never forget her

introduction to Marion.

Yeah, when Marion bit me

it was kind of a surprise,

because I'd seen Jesus get bit

by snakes all the time.

He might not admit that,

but he gets bit a lot.

It goes with the territory.

I thought

Well, it can't hurt that much,

because it happens all the time.

He doesn't say much.

And she bit me, and yeah

it hurt like hell.

That's a huge head just full of muscle

it's just pure muscle.

And she got the

smallest part of my body,

and yeah, there's no denying it.

It hurts a lot.

Alright

Big snake, big snake.

Marion has always made her

contributions to science reluctantly.

Jesus is convinced she remembers

each capture...

and gets more dangerous

with each encounter.

Alright.

Alright. It's her.

Marion is quite capable

of killing a human being.

If I let her wrap around me,

I'm history.

I'm gone.

I'd need at least two more,

three more people to unwrap her

because once she makes the loop,

she is absolutely impossible to undo.

You can't just stick your hands

between the loops and loosen her up.

It's much too tight.

So even if I have people helping me

they need to know what they're doing,

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