Our own mini-Pantanal

It probably wasn't even 15 minutes after I posted the previous entry that it started raining really hard around here. Watching the radar, we could see that the rain bands from Hurricane Dolly were starting to become more numerous and quite intense. For a while there, it WAS a little scary because there was so much talk on TV about tornadoes in the area. But the rain bands stayed manageable for us, as far as the amount of rain we received and when we walked out into the field later that day, we saw 2 1/2 inches recorded in the rain gauge. We could have used a little more rain, but we'll take whatever we can get.
The neat thing, though, is that when we went out to check the rain gauge, we also went to the end of our field to see how the creek looked. As we were standing by the fence, watching the water flow, I noticed a snake swimming towards the grass by the flowing water. I excitedly pointed it out to Guillermo, but he didn't get to see it because by then it was already in the grass. We went to another vantage spot to try to see it better if it came back out of the grass. We were happy to see the snake re-emerge and slither lazily around in the water's edge. Then all of a sudden, we saw a small fish trying to swim by the edge of the water, and as it floundered around half in-half out of the water, to our surprise, we witnessed the snake lunge at the fish and capture it!! We watched in amazement as the snake held its head up with the fish in its mouth and then watched the snake slither back into the grass. We couldn't see the snake's head very well at that point, but we figured it was enjoying its fish dinner but then the next thing we knew, we saw the fish spring back into the water with the snake in full pursuit. The fish did manage to get away (although it was close) and the snake just kind of hung around that spot hoping to get another chance. We decided to go back to the house for our camera and binoculars, but by the time we got back, the snake was gone.
We then fixed dinner, talked with Rebeca on the phone for a while and found out that she and Jason had spent the previous evening in the animal emergency room because little Diablillo (a.k.a Energumeno) had messed with a toad and was showing the signs of that. Afterwards we decided to walk back out to the creek to see what was going on. (We were also trying to get in our 7,000 steps for the day, but neither of us managed to get past 5,000.) Anyway, when we got to our back fence, we noticed the snake was back!! And there was another snake with it!! Then, about 3 minutes later, a 3rd snake swims up!! The first two snakes kind of stayed hidden by the grass, but that 3rd snake just kept swimming along the water's edge back and forth, and one time we saw it snap at something, but weren't sure what it was. Then it just got too dark to see well, so we went back inside, glad we were able to witness such neat things. We are pretty sure all three snakes were water mocassins and they were about 3 feet long.
It seems like after it rains, and the creek runs a little, that a lot goes on back there. I might call it a "mini-Pantanal", but it is nowhere NEAR how the Pantanal is. It just reminds us of the place. In the Pantanal, you can't go 10 feet without saying, "Look!", or "Wow!", or "What is that?!?", or "Did you see that?!?" or "Whoa!!" and similar phrases about what you are seeing. If it were within our means, we'd go back to the Pantanal tomorrow.
By the way, Energumeno is just fine.