ABSTRACT
Hiking across the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica in early 1982, I (Roberts) spent a night at the guardhouse of the Corcovado National Park, one of the most remote and best-protected pieces of old-growth tropical rainforest in Central America. Sleeping in a crumbling hut, I was warned by the guards of the parasites that can fall from the thatch roofing and burrow into the skin of unsuspecting sleepers. I did not sleep much anyway, with the machine gun-like sounds of chattering toucans battling for territory like the Contra guerrilla “freedom fighters” on the border of Nicaragua, not so far away.
