Snake!

December 29th, 2007 at 23:04 · Filed Under Animals, At Home, Days in My Life, Family, Gardening · 2 Comments 

I like snake but I never touch one before. Today, I came to a close encounter with a snake. My telephone and DSL fritz again. I could not make a call from my house telephone so I went to mom’s house to report a faulty line to Telekom. When I arrived there slightly before noon, I saw a snake sliding on the electrical cable on the wall of the neighbor’s house. I saw its tail moving and sliding into the crevice between the wall and electric cable. At first glance, the color of the snake was black. It could be the venomous cobra. I could estimate it was about 3 to 4 feet long!

Without further delay, I called the Bomba (Fire Department) to help capture the snake. I waited at the front of mom’s house to keep an eye on the snake while waiting for the Bomba to arrive. After some minutes, they came in a fire engine.

They checked the crevice but could not find any sign of a snake. I told them that I really saw its tail about 2 feet long and that could not be a lizard’s tail. One of the guy inspected further under the crevice and he saw something and confirmed a snake was hiding in the crevice. He used a thick cable to reach into the crevice and the snake fell out.

I was right! It was about 4 feet long. Black but with some green and black cross hatching. They said it was “ular daun” (literally translated leaf snake).

The photo (click for larger view) is not so clear to confirm the species of the snake. But it could be Chrysopelea ornata or Chrysopelea paradisi (paradise tree snake). This tree snake could fly and often called flying snake or flying tree snake. Watch the movies how the snake “fly” here. This is a website of Jake Socha, a hepatologist from The University of Chicago. Very interesting.

Back to the snake. We thought it was dead or passed out because it was not moving. That’s why I went closer (but not too close) to take the photo. After a while, it became lively again and moved swiftly under my car. The Bomba men were trying to surround it but it moved too quickly and finally it found an exit and disappeared into the bushes in front of mom’s house. I saw it moving swiftly into the bush and I was closest to it. I could have picked up its tail but I did not have the gut to do it. Not like my karate grand master who is so quick that he can catch an Okinawan Habu snake with his bare hand. The Okinawan Habu snake is a very venomous snake on Okinawa.

The incident also brought two schoolmates to meet again. One of the Bomba guy, asked me if I was from St David just before they left. We exchanged some information and he appeared to be Khalid from 5A2, same year as me. What a happy ending. The snake did not die, two ex-schoolmate met again. Really happy ending.

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