nomad4ever

Today after lunch, I was just sinking in my arm chair to read ‘The Bali Times’ – it suddenly became a bit hectic in our yard. The cat was running around scared and began hiding combined with some desperate meowing, followed then by an awakening hunting instinct towards the bushes and palm trees in our yard.

What was going on?

Armed with a broom stick I parted some leaves around the plants and noticed some moving shiny brown body. Very slim and lots of curves. The centerfold of the month? No!

A snake of about 40-50cm of length was hiding behind the plants. Understandable – it’s quite a shady and cool place to rest from the merciless Bali sun.

It came probably from the rice paddies in front of our house, which look like a great place for frogs, mice or other prey. Hold on – aren’t those serpents dangerous? Is the cat in danger? A whole nest of snakes there maybe? Questions over questions shot through my head. :-)

Doing a quick check on the internet about snakes in Indonesia and especially Bali, here and here – I was almost certain, that the snake wasn’t poisonous. But hey – you never know!

At least I learned something today, that there are about 450 snake species in Indonesia, out of those only about 5-6 are dangerous, like the colourful Coral Snake, the Banded Krait, Black Spitting Cobra and King Cobra, Malaysian and Green Pit Vipers, Temple Viper and Sea Snakes. Sound pretty scary enough though…

I wonder if I ever see one of those in Bali. This is only the second encounter with a snake so far, the other one being a road kill of a similar species a few weeks back (see picture left).

What did we do with the snake? Nothing much. Just taking a picture (above right), putting the cat in the house for a while and leaving the snake alone. Hoping that our intruder will be gone by nightfall and isn’t taking up residence here.

Enjoy your weekend!

Technorati : Black Spitting Cobra and King Cobra, Coral Snake, Malaysian and Green Pit Vipers, Temple Viper and Sea Snakes, bali, cat, indonesia, snake, the Banded Krait

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written by Chris