(HOST) On a recent school trip, commentator and nature writer Ted Levin was reminded that when observing wildlife, it’s important to remember that it is – after all – wild.
(LEVIN) Several years ago, I brought my boys to the Hopkins Center at Dartmouth College to see Werner Herzog’s acclaimed documentary "Grizzly Man." The film was not exactly what I expected – at that point I hadn’t read any reviews. It was, as most everyone knows by now, it wasn’t so much a window on bears as it was a window on a man who though he could commune with wild, thousand pound carnivores. For thirteen years, Timothy Treadwell summered in Alaska among the bears, breaking all sorts of National Park Service regulations about fraternizing with wildlife, and slowly over those years Treadwell lost his grip on reality.
Eventually, brother bear mauls Treadwell and his girl friend. A lens cap covered Treadwell’s video camera, which ran during the attack – for reasons known only to Treadwell. But a microphone recorded their demise. The most poignant scene in the documentary showed the look on Herzog’s face as he listened through headphones to the final moments of Treadwell and his friend, an event the filmmaker thankfully spared his audience.
I thought of the late Timothy Treadwell while boating down the Tarcoles River in Costa Rica with a group of Hanover High School students. Our river guide billed himself as "Croc Man," fearless warrior of the muddy Tarcoles. Our cruise is slow, very slow, in fact. Howler monkeys sit in riverine trees, big, dark-colored, leaf-eating simians, indolent and amused, watching our progress.
We see birds galore – southern lapwings, northern jacanas, turquoise-browed motmots, a yellow-headed caracara picking ticks off the back of a Zebu cow. The cow flicks her tail in annoyance, and the caracara jumps the cow’s tail as though skipping rope. We also see several emerald-colored Amazon kingfishers, and a score of familiar wading birds: great blue heron, snowy egret, tri-colored heron, yellow-crowned night heron to mention a few.
The Tarcoles River is the American crocodile capital of Costa Rica. Before the cruise ends, I count more than thirty crocodiles, many over twelve-feet long, several approaching fifteen-feet. The crocodiles are endangered, a reptile once heavily hunted for its hide, but now protected and making a modest comeback, at least in South Florida, the northern fringe of its range. Here, on the Tarcoles, the leviathan prospers; the reason soon becomes frighteningly apparent.
When "Croc Man" spots a crocodile he calls "Mike Tyson," he embeds the bow of the boat in the bank and disembarks, a raw drumstick in his teeth. He sinks to knees in the ooze, chirping like a bird in distress. Slowing a very large head moves from mid-river toward the shore. Closer . . . closer. . rising full-bodied out of the viscous water like some antediluvian nightmare, the crocodile removes the offering from "Croc Man’s" mouth with it’s own, snout to nose with only inches to spare. We watch in stunned silence as "Croc Man" pushes him away, a performance fit for a Herzog film.