The other day I splurged on Amazon and bought five new books, all relevant to the Maya people and their history. The packages arrived Friday and Saturday, with four books all in one box. I had a huge grin on my face when I saw that box, despite walking three-quarters of a mile through the mud back to the house.
I spent the weekend reading, writing and boiling sap, not all in that order. The sap season is finished, with my husband canning the last batch last night while I curled up on the couch with two books. It was hard to decide which one to look at first, so I opted for the book with the most pictures: Maya Nature by Thor Janson. Beautiful photographs of the flora and fauna of the Mayan world from Mexico to Guatemala and Belize. I must admit I skimmed over all the photos of vipers and coral snakes, but then realized I may want to use one at some point in my novel, so went back and studied them again.
I found a useful tip on how to distinguish between the coral snake and the king snake, which is non-dangerous. They both have bands of red, black and yellow on them, so knowing the order of the bands will tell you whether the snake is a coral or a king. This is how people in Belize remember "red and yellow, kill a fellow; red and black, friend of Jack."
Another interesting thing I read was about manatees, which live off the Caribbean coast of Central America. Mayan fishermen used to hunt the manatee and dry the meat for something they called "butan." When the Spanish and other European invaders, like the pirates arrived, they relied on this meat to survive and were thus called "buccaneers."
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