Forum Moderators: open
I'm an Irish man living in Bangkok. As you no doubt know St. Patrick got rid of all of the snakes in Ireland.
Today I heard a shreak from the Nanny and jumped up to see what was wrong. There is a snake in the garden.
Now, being from Ireland, I've never seen a snake in the wild and was keen to take a look.
She brought me to a bush (which is about 1 foot high) and pointed out part of a snakes body hiding in the bush (about 1/2 inch in diameter).
Wanting to get a better look I picked up a stick and rustled the bush...about 3 seconds later the snake had turned around, slid up a 7 foot tall fir tree which is adjacent to the bush and popped it head out at about my head level! This [wildthailandphotos.com] is exactly what I seen looking back at me (not my picture but exactly what I saw).
It looked at me for a while, then considering my 6' 3" 18 stone size, must have thought that I was too big too eat (thank God / Buddah), and went back down to the bush.
I know that you Americans have experience with snakes but this is a first for me, as we used to say back home "I was touching cloth".
I won't be doing it again - too scary.
But, in Thailand, I would stay as far away as I could. When I was there, I also saw a beautiful snake (in the bathroom of the guest house I was staying in, no less) only to find out later at the Queen Saovapha Memorial Institute And Snake Farm that it was a rather poisonous variety. I decided that it would be best to leave them alone while there.
BTW, if you want to see many snakes close up, the Snake Farm is an excellent place to do so and it is right there in Bangkok.
;-)
Closest I've ever been to a snake was in Tanzania, on the edges of the Serengeti. I and two or three other stupidly naive tourists spotted a smallish green snake slithering through rocks and bushes, so we decided to sort of follow it as closely as we could by leaping excitedly from stone to stone shouting, pointing and crouching down in front of it to get a better look.
After we lost it (or it lost us) we described the snake to our guide. That, he calmy told us, was a green mamba...
Syzygy
Don't worry, they are essentially harmless. While they do have venom, it's mild to adult humans. They are a bird/lizard eating snake. I think they are primarily arboreal, so I wouldn't worry about them sneaking in your house, etc.
If I see a King Cobra in my garden I think that I'll be too busy running to phone the snake farm!
mattglet: They might find my 2 year old and 3 year old girls tasty. Turns out that a neighbour of mine has one in his garden also. I've lived in this house for two years now and this is a first. We live next to a klong (canal) which has lots of frogs (or toads never sure which).
We were 4 hours from anything remotely civilised on the border of the Congo and Uganda in a stilted safari camp tracking Chimpanzees. One evening on the way back from the 'bar' Kim stumbled from the path after too many Tuskans and fell into the bushes. I had only ever heard the 6ft8in Kenyan/Norwegian scream once before and it involved a comedy moment with a warthog and hedgerow, but this time there was more fear in his voice.
When we shined the flashlights on him a green snake, not too unlike in colour to the one above, slithered off into the grass. Never in my life have I sobered up as quickly, as the severity of the moment dawned on us. Unfortunately for Kim our ill equipped hosts had little in the way of antivenom, and you need the correct serum or apperently you can do more harm than good. Thinking Kim was about to die we piled into the land rover and steamed off into the night - The road was our biggest obstacle, so fraught with pot holes to go over 40 was suicide. Kim (female) mopped Kim’s brow in an attempt to keep his delerium at bay while myself and my dad picked our way through the jungle road as fast as we could.
On reaching the first village the only person who could speak English who was awake told us that we needed to head about 10 miles east to another village where a Doctor was visiting. The next 10 miles quickly turned into 60 as we realised that our kind giver of directions had no concept of distance what so ever. Luckily he had offered to come as he needed to visit that village and as a small aside kindly informed us that Kim was going to die.
He hadn’t so far…
so we continued to pummel the road. On arriving at the village we found that the doctor had left in the mornimg and was not back for 3 days. But his nurse was still there helping the local children so with her help we crossed our fingers while she administered the antovenom to Kim who totally incoherent by now.
Within 30 minutes of the antivenom Kim was out of shock and his face had more colour, the serum worked and the swelling seemed to subside from the bite on his arm, only to be replaced by a swelling in the other arm where the injection had been given. Added panic ensued as our hitchhiker again informed us that that was not a good sign and Kim was still going to die.
He hadn’t so far…
So we continued on to the only town with a hospital at breakneck speed (thankfully it was tarmacced). On Arriving at the hospital (loosest description) we offered the obligatory bribes and were seen to pretty quickly. The doctor informed us that the swelling was a normal side effect of the antivenom and that Kim was not suffering from snake venom at all. As it turns out Kim was so stunned by the bite the shock had sent him into the delirious state, and that if 99% of any of the rest of the snakes from the local area had bitten him he’d have died hours ago and saved us all a trip. The doctor very graciuosly kept the bribe for the consultation and laughed his way down the corridoor.
So amazed and thankful for everything we could do nothing but laugh ourselves and headed back to camp. Anyway, as we picked our way through the dawn back to our beds we all agreed that a heathly mix of Tucsan Brand Beer and Ugandan Rainforest was probably not a good idea. So the final day of the trip was, for all intents and purposes, alcohol and snake free.
The spiders on the other hand...
