In the early morning, the cloud forest of Cusuco National Park in Honduras has an ancient, almost mystical feeling. The normally vivid colors of the flowers, lichen, and moss that thrive in this rare ecosystem seem dulled by the thick fog that pervades the forest canopy. But as the visual senses are dampened, the acoustic world seems to explode into life. The orchestra of bird calls, each perfectly adapted to fill a different frequency range in the cacophony, is punctuated by the bellows of howler monkeys reverberating through the trees. In every direction there is life, sustained by the mist that seems to flow in and out of everything you see.

After a few hours of exploring this remarkable paradise, our attention was caught by a breathtaking sight—an electric green streak darting across the path in front of me. Before I could think, the snake was in my hands, grasped gently behind the head so it couldn’t bite.

It was stunning. Adrenaline surged through my veins as I studied its dazzling colors.

One of my friends, a Honduran researcher, told me the snake was a nonvenomous species called a green racer. I released my grip so that it could move freely between my hands. 

Then suddenly the snake lunged, sinking its fangs into the flesh of my left hand.

I put it down on the ground and gingerly stepped away, giving my Honduran colleague a chance to take a closer look at the animal, and I saw her eyes widen in alarm. As the snake glided into the undergrowth, she told me she had been wrong. It was not a harmless green racer. It was, in fact, a green palm pit viper: a species with highly dangerous hemotoxic venom.

The shift in my mental state from bliss into chaos was mayhem. I was two hours from town and I’d........

© Time