Slithering Snake

Friday afternoon, our doorbell rings. It's our driver telling me that just now the security guards have caught a snake by the guard house. He said it was a green snake. Would I like to see it? Well, of course, I want to see it. S wanted no part in viewing it.

On the left is Ramu, one of our head security guards, and on the right is Moorthy, who obviously had no problem holding onto the snake. By the way, at the time of these photos, the snake is still alive.

While the snake isn't very big in diameter, it probably was about 4 feet long. It doesn't look very big, mean, and vicious in this photo. But hey, a snake is a snake as far as I'm concerned. They told me that this snake was "no poison." Also, I was told how they were going to kill the snake, but I won't share those details in case I have any snake lovers reading my blog.

Well after seeing the snake, I had to run inside and get out my reptile and amphibian reference book to see if I could figure out what type of snake we had. It was actually pretty easy to identify as there aren't that many long slim green colored snakes that live in India. It was a long-nosed whipsnake. My book says that whipsnakes found in Asia have the best vision of any snakes. The main reason for this is because they eat lizards and thus have to be able to see them camouflaged in vegetation. Great...now that we have one less whipsnake around our property we'll probably gain a million more geckos! Can't win for trying here! The other thing my reference book tells me about this type of snake is that it is mildly venomous (even though our driver and guards told me it wasn't). Further research tells me that a bite from this snake will just cause swelling for a few days, but not death. Trust me, I'm not going to volunteer to see whether or not this is true.

So, this slithering snake was number 4 for us. Four down...who knows how many more to come?