School started again today here in Taiwan, so we made extensive use of the last holiday weekend, cramming as much herping into the two days as possible. Saturday morning I took my two sons and two of their buddies on a four-hour hike along a little canal in a beautiful, virginal forest that afforded us serene quietude, magnificent vistas, pristine mountain air, and absolutely zero snakes - zilch, nada, nix, none, 没有, niente.
So, when we finally got back to the car at noon, the sun blazing at us from both barrels, we were in a state of utter despondency (aggravated by a story other hikers had told us about a huge rat snake they'd just seen), and thus, my brain addled by the double whammy of brutal tropical midday sun and major skunkage, I decided to take desperate measures: "Boys, we need to find us a snake. ANY snake. Let's comb that long ditch up on Mt. Chungcheng, there's always something, EVEN IF IT'S JUST ANOTHER FRICKIN' GRASS SNAKE!" Of course, I didn't really think we'd see anything at that brain-frying time of day, but I had to do something to keep me from going crazy. Addicts are funny that way.
It turned out to be the right decision: we drove up to the ditch, parked the car, and - literally - as soon as I had jumped into the leaf litter, I spotted this snake speeding down the gully as if Cerberus and all of his hell hound buddies were hard on his tail. I don't think I've ever seen a snake this small move so damn fast. As I raced down the two-foot wide trench trying to catch the beast, continuously in danger of tripping over branches or wiping out on the slippery leaves, the four ditchside kids cheered me on like mad. And for a good reason -
Sibynophis chinensis chinensis isn't your average muck snake, nosireebob. Not only is it quite rare, but also very hard to spot, since it spends most of his life under dead leaves hunting for small frogs and skinks. Plus, this one was a good-sized adult, so letting him get away was not an option (and would have resulted in at least ten extra LamerDad points awarded to me by my sons). Eventually I did manage to grab the serpent without throwing out half my lumbar vertebrae, or at least smacking headlong into the black goop, and we commenced to have our merry ways with it. Sorry about the dearth of photos - I took a boatload of pix, including many close-ups, but the animal wiggled and fought so much that the macros were all but unusable.
By the way, the English common name for this colubrid seems to be "Asiatic Many-Toothed Snake" (the God of Herpetology alone knows why), but I prefer the much more poignant and realistic Taiwanese version, "Black-Headed Snake". In Mainland China it's called "Sword Snake", a name that has found its way into the genus name
Sibynophis.
Twoton's Snayk-Rasslin' Krew, catch under hat/in hand. Ditch in the background.
EPILOGUE: Right after that, we saw another nice snake in the same ditch, a very beautiful and very young (just about three feet)
Zaocys dhumnades (think HUGE racer). I didn't manage to catch it, but hey, everything is good for something, as my Ma is fond of saying: at least, it was a prime opportunity for the four children to hear and learn some of the foulest language under the sun, in three different languages and at ear-splitting volume. After that we finally went home, fell into a three-hour coma, and then headed out again for some all-night cruising that yielded eight more snakes, including a pretty
Mock Viper and a female
Protobothrops mucrosquamatus guarding a clutch of eggs and a neonate inside a drainage pipe. Sadly, there was no way to photograph the happy family, the pipe was too narrow....
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Maybe there's hope for me after all...