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Last Saturday the boys and me joined Prof. Hsiang Gao-shih, one of the foremost TW herpetologists and sort of my personal mentor, on a night hike along a narrow canal deep in the forests of Yangmingshan National Park. We started out late in the afternoon, walking about three klicks to a large clearing where we had dinner and waited for nightfall. Apart from the three TwoTons, "we" also included about 50 university students from one of Hsiang's biology classes; the hike was one of their two semester outings and their goal to find as many nocturnal creatures as possible.

Now, 50+ hyped-up college kids whiling away the time until nightfall with silly games and miscellaneous screaming isn't exactly my scene; so I left the boys to con the students out of their snacks and soda pops, and took off to explore a little further along the trail. After about half an hour I saw a footlong snake swimming in the little canal, obviously trying to get away from me. I used my hook to pull it out, then tried to keep it from getting back into the drink, while simultaneously attempting to ID it. After determining that this was not a dangerous snake, I picked it up behind the head (just in case it was a biter) and headed back to camp. On the way there I wracked my brain, but was still unable to come up with an ID. (Hey, don't blame me - there's almost 40 species to pick from up here in the hills).

When I arrived back in camp, Hsiang took a look at the critter and said "Hey, nice 百步幼蛇!" (bai3bu4you4she2) - meaning "juvenile Hundred-Pacer" (Deinagkistrodon acutus), one of the Really Venomous Five here on the island. Well, I had seen pix of juvie D. acutus before, and this thing certainly didn't LOOK like one, but after all, Hsiang is THE expert on Taiwanese snakes, so who am I to doubt his judgement? Instantly, the blood rushed into my head, my mouth went dry and my knees started to buckle, as I realized that I'd just lived through every herper's nightmare: misidentifying a dangerous reptile as a harmless one and casually handling it just like a frickin' earthworm. On top of that, I had just walked back to camp at quite a brisk clip for about 30 minutes, constantly in danger of slipping on the rocky and muddy trail. Had I actually fallen and let go of the snake, there would have been a good chance for him to tag me. So I stood there, my emotions roller-coastering through my solar plexus: how can I EVER justify this utter stupidity to my children, who were watching the whole scene with much excitement? How will I ever explain away the fact that I had just violated pretty much every rule I'd ever told them about snake catching, destroying every last ounce of what little respect the might have for me in the process?

Mustering the few shreds of countenance I had left, and concentrating hard on keeping my voice from trembling, I asked Professor Hsiang "Uh....are you ...ah...sure?".

"Sure I'm sure!" he laughed. "That's a 白腹游蛇!" (bai2fu4you2she2), literally "White-bellied Water Snake" (Sinonatrix percarinata suriki). Chinese is a tonal language - different tones make for different meanings (the numbers behind the syllables denote the various tones) - and suddenly I realized that I had completely misunderstood him the first time around, not only because I wasn't very familiar with this species, but probably also because in my excitement, and for psycholinguistic reasons unknown, I had projected the tones for the Hundred-Pacer onto his speech. Goes to show, you can learn and speak a language for 20 years in-country, and still screw up. I'll spare you the story how I once mispronounced the word for "Giant Panda" as "chest hair" in front of 30 merciless third-graders.....

Well, on to the pix. We had a nice show-and-tell session, after which Professor Hsiang taught my boys how to arrange snakes for photographs.

















The fellow on the left, by the way, is Dr. Wesley Chen, an accomplished nature photographer and emergency room physician who's really into venomous snakes and snake venom research, and has co-authored a slew of papers such as "Differences in Clinical Profiles of Patients with Protobothrops mucrosquamatus and Viridovipera Envenoming in Taiwan" and "Trimeresurus stejnegeri Envenoming during Pregnancy". In short, my most valuable herping buddy

Rollin with the big dogs!

Funny, and good story, but ,Wow, Hans,
I can't believe you challenged an oriental instructor.
zàijiàn, Bill

Well... he's also my friend. Plus, the days of the sinister, Confucio-Spartan martinets feared by students of every discipline from martial arts to calligraphy are definitely over. The younger generation of educators encourages questions.

That's great to hear.
When I worked the orient a bit (PRC, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore (mostly in the 80s), I was the instructor, and getting students to ask questions and loosen up was allot of work!!

Now THAT, unfortunately, is still very much the rule.

LOL...great story!

Great story and cool snake. Looking forward to more from Taiwan. Yeah that can happen sometimes. Which is why If I ever make it to Asia/Africa/Australia I won't handle any snakes I can't positively ID, the elapids are too easy to mistake for colubrids and even if its a colubrid it may still pack a punch. We have it easy here in N. America and S. America we have to ask is it a viperid or is it a coral snake both of which are a cinch to ID down to that level. If its not then its pretty much safe to handle. However even these snakes can be misidentified in the right circumstances. The first timber rattlesnake I ever found was under a ledge in a place where I didn't think they were found. It was dark and I couldn't really see it and I thought it was a bullsnake which would have been a lifer. I thought about reaching in and pulling it out of the darkness for photos but noticed something was strange about it. Long story short I didn't realize it was a rattlesnake until almost getting bitten in the face.

Holy Schnoz! I guess there's an upside to starting this hobby at an advanced age....you're just more careful than twenty years before. On Sunday I was hiking a popular mountain here in our area, and at one time there were three young and severely overweight ladies on the trail in front of us. All of a sudden, the one in the middle jumps about three feet straight in the air and screams "SNAKE!SNAKE!SNAAAAAAKE!!GAAAAAHHH!!" I rushed over, and she pointed to a very short bit of dark brown, thin tail still sticking out of the trail side grass where the serpent had fled after almost being squished by 250 pounds of human meat. The rest of the snake was too far buried in the tall grass, so no luck even with a snake hook. Now, I could have just snatched the tail and yanked the snake out of the grass, but it was just too damn dangerous: at three in the afternoon on a sunny, yet cool trail around 3000 feet altitude, there's quite the chance for this to be a young Chinese cobra - not exactly an animal you want to mess with five steep, rocky miles from the next road. So I swallowed my excitement and hiked on, trying to mollify myself with the other roadside attractions like ginger blossoms and Indian Forest Skinks.....meh.