The Coconut Vine
January 9, 2025
The shooting the day before Christmas was rumored to be a “crime of passion.” I am not on the Coconut Vine, so I don’t know any more about it. The Coconut Vine is the Tico equivalent of our grape vine. It’s how everyone I talk to knows everything way before I do. An example follows.
This morning I was preparing for the morning dog walk with Mama Dog and Chispa (Chi) by sitting on the shoe bench in front of the house and putting on my boots when Chi began barking at something under the bench. I got up to look, and at first sight registered only something round and brown, like the head of a large mushroom. Then I saw it was a coiled and sleeping fer de lance, not very big, but very poisonous. I had been sitting practically on top of it. Happily, it was a sound sleeper. I yelled “NO!” at Chi as she moved in to sniff it, and weighed whether I should try to capture and release it, kill it, or call someone. I have done the capture and release on a very small one in the past, and have resorted to a machete with a larger one back when I had no way to communicate with the outside world. I ended up calling my helper Albin’s wife, Guisselle, as I knew Albin would already be out working. Guisselle told me their boy Steven was working at the home of my next-door neighbors, so I sent him a WhatsApp text and photo of the snake. He was there within minutes with his machete, and dispatched it.
I feel a little guilty, but not too guilty. To capture it I would have had to move the bench out and risk awakening it, and then would have had to take it quite a way away to prevent it from coming back. I was in the middle of laundry and had someone coming over to help me with my Excel sheets at 9:30, and hadn’t had breakfast yet. So after Steven had taken the snake away on the end of his machete I continued putting on my boots, and was about to get Chispa on the leash when a truck pulled up in outside the gate. It was Albin’s brother Luis who had heard about the snake from his father who had heard about it from Guisselle. All in less than 10 minutes. Luis told me about the death of our neighbor Carol’s little dog Olive who was bitten by a fer de lance inside their house—more of the coconut vine.
As someone who keeps much to myself I wouldn’t have heard about Olive’s death if Luis had not come by to make sure the snake was taken care of. But I know the entire Tico community had heard within hours of the incident. As in the game Telephone that we played as children where we whispered a phrase from one to another and waited to see if what came out of the last person’s mouth bore any resemblance to what the first person had whispered, much of what I hear on the Coconut Vine is rumor only, so I don’t take most of it too seriously. But I am grateful for the neighbors who look out for this crotchety old gringa.
