Mike Boston Enjoying Norops capito, the Pug-Nosed Anole

Pug-Nosed Anole

I didn’t want to name this “Mike Boston Osa Naturalist,’ or “a Biograpy of Mike Boston, Osa Naturalist,” since a lot of bio’s have been written before in part.  And also, in this short account I wouldn’t be able to do Mike Boston’s extraordinary life justice.  But I did want to write a bit about the creature on the other end of the lizard’s mouth, pictured here.  Enough words so that I got some feeling of the person, without under, or over doing it.  I know I can’t meet that goal, but here I try.  I like to write stream of consciousness in a way- with out editing out much, just what comes to mind.  So it stands.

I met Mike on a fluke, among all the other flukes, and not like the flukes that randomly infest livers.  My meeting with Mr. Boston was a fluke ‘par excellance.’  We were a bit late for a flight out of Pureto Jimenez (PJ) in 2002 during the dry season.  PJ as many columns note is a bit like a wild-west town.  It is.  And  the obvious place a first Osa Peninsula (SW part of Costa Rica) visitor would stop- to eat quickly- is Carolina’s Restaurant.  It is the “gringo” meeting & eating place (as also most columns on PJ note), and really is a great central place to meet up.  It serves Tico food, and it serves Hamburgers, the help is nice, and the food is good.  So you see.  Its near all the tour booking ports, rooms, stores, and the one guy who is combo goods broker, money man, phone card guy (this cracked me up).  Especially since most of the phones don’t work.  Carolina’s restaurant even has a few shady regulars.  So, I was in line paying my 20,000 Colones (I’m not converting, no math here), for a few meals, and a few Imperial beers.  I was with the owner of the lodge we had just stayed at on this first trip, this was Bruce Argyle, and the lodge was the Terrapin Lodge (at that time) in Carate, Osa.  Bruce had been telling me all week in Carate, “. . .too bad Mike Boston is busy this week, he’s on tour in Corcovado National Park, cause you guys would really hit it off, he also loves herps (reptiles and amphibians).”  Bruce had accompanied us back to Puerto Jimenez to get some goods for his lodge.  We had already said our good-byes, when he walked up to me while I was paying for the food and said “Dude!, there’s Mike Boston sitting right there.”  He pointed to a man with a hat on (I would imagine the SAME hat in the photo here) who was seeing off his hikers from Corcovado, smiling hugging people goodbye.  The group looked like a group should look right out of the jungle back from Sirena Bio Station, the 12 some odd mile walk to Carate,  Then the Collectivo (like a bus, but its a pick-up truck) ride back to Puerto Jimenez.  “Mike!” I said while shaking his hand.  Me and my friend Matt Harris, who is also a herper had been told the same mantra all week about “we have to meet Mike,” also greeted Mike with the same enthusiasm.  “Mike you should know. . .”, “Mike did you read. . .?,” “Mike do you know?,” “Mike next trip we need to meet up and do some herping!”   And we did meet up with Mike that next trip.  In fact, we met up about 9 times or so since that serendipitous day.  For Mike would become a true friend, not of only me- but of all my friends.  This is a guy that all should meet, if just for one time, even a moment.  I’d call him hardscrabble, but that would be overdoing it.  I’d call him small bodied, but that would undermine his amazing strength and endurance.  I know he’s older then me (I’m 51), but I never asked him how old he is.  He seems to always out walk me in the jungle; he has almost a legendary endurance.  AND, he laughs at me when I fall.  And I take it of course, because to be laughed at by Mike Boston is a bit of like being blessed by some wilderness Pope.  A belly laugh aimed at another naturalist who for whatever reason, in his own life (me), found a second home, a second feeling of peace, in the strange land Mike has lived in for (I have no idea- how many years now).  Last trip, I took a nasty head splitting fall (lump the size of a golf ball) that really shook me to my core.  I was barefoot on wet moss.  I took a miss-step.  It was my fault I think.  I fell into a rocky carve-out, where swirling water had made a stone dip.  I hit my head- blood- black out.  You see, we were a bit away from a hospital, so of course I immediately thought the worse.  When I was assured I wasn’t dying from a fractured skull by my friend Chuck who said “. . Dude!. . .the skull isn’t out of place, your awake, your talking to me, and your not dead yet- YOU DIDN’T fracture your skull.”  The blood dripping down my face still had me shaking.  Someway though what Chuck said made me feel better- or at least stop shaking.  Then I saw Mike sitting on the rocks, kinda smiling, smoking a cigarette, calmly just looking at the jungle.  He looked over at me as if he saw me staring at him, “Kenny man what heck were you trying to do?” In the comforting deep Irish brogue that anyone would love.  Well, we all laughed out loud.  See exactly WHAT WAS I trying to Do?  He really hit it on the mark.  It was really funny stuff.  I survived by the way, can you tell?   Then Mike added that I’m lucky that I’m not a woman he knows dearly, who flew off of a motorcycle and “never concussed at all” as he said, almost dying- and being sewn up now as we are speaking,” again assuring me that I was going to live and since I was still conscious and hadn’t “concussed.”  About this time I was able to get up.   Back to Mike.  Mike knows a bit about everything on the Osa, and even more about other lands, and then a lot about other things.  He’s easy to take on a new thought line- that makes great conversation, or new animal group if given the go.  And he’ll listen to anyone about anything from the topic of afterlife, to the idea of coincidence, to monkeys, to sea snakes, and maybe a float into the tapir world for 20 minutes.  He’ll just listen well too.  Sometimes segueing back to his love of Ichneumon wasps that he studied in Ireland.  Or his boyhood days growing up in Trinidad & Tobago and catching boas when only 7 or so.  I don’t know all the facts in their right order, and never should.  Mike holds a mystery that should be respected this way- at least I think- to really appreciate and get into this guy’s psyche.  I see a man who outside of what I don’t know about him is clearly a TRUE NATURALIST.  One that smiles at nature with the look of a 5 year old at a box of chocolate.  He exudes an enthusiasm of tropical biology, and if he could, he’d look into all the facets of every niche and every little cranny of the tropics he could (I purposefully didn’t say nook).  His knowledge is encyclopedic, and he seems be able to hear frogs I can’t detect (and I have excellent hearing).  And when he does, he seems to be able to walk right up to a frog and SEE IT, hiding- dime sized- in a mud crevice or under leaves.  It still frustrates me.  I can’t do this!!    But watching Mike do it is enough fun to make up for my lack of this particular anuran talent.  I have more stories then I can pen here about our experiences on the Osa, Mike and I, Mike and our groups of gringos, some seasons, many newbies.  Its all with a fondness that drives me back each year to this wonderful and magical land, with this magical naturalist, who seems to be at least partly on some similar path as all other naturalists.   The vestiges of the lingering little boy that grabs the world by its reigns and takes opportunities to delight- adults, children and even the shy.  He’ll pull a turn, a move that will blow one away (to segue with a colloquial).  Tapping me on my back in the pouring rain, pitch black one night- on a beach- I turn around to find Mike with a crocodile in his arms like a 4 foot human slung over his arms, tail dangling.  He appeared like that out of the night from a lagoon, being gone off by himself for 10 minutes or so, a few of us were yelling, “Mike you okay?,” scaring the bejesus out of us!  Or as I photographed here, letting a gorgeous Norops capito,* an anoline lizard rather common in the jungle, bite and hang off of his finger to humor others, and of course also himself.  All the while using the opportunity to teach, inform, get into the gusto of the life and beauty in this creature.  Delighting in the tenacity of this tiny life, and the wonderment in his eyes hold the joy of all naturalists of all backgrounds, in all situations.  Let there be a Mike Boston on every land.  Let us be delighted by small things, small living things.  Sometimes the strongest legacies, and biggest lessons in life, aren’t in the perfect clearly organized un-natural worlds, but they may lie in the serendipitous and coincidental natural worlds of perfection.  Thanks MIKE!!!**

*Mike runs Osaaventura and can be found at www.osaaventura.com

**Norops capito, the Pug-Nosed Anole, is a delightful creature, that is another lizard with cryptic markings of lichen and moss that is often found hunting on tree trunks.  They are often the first lizards encountered on hikes (after what one might see near lodges).  I include another photo of the animal here.