During our usual FNMC (Friday Night Mountain Cruise) last night we passed two herpers (identifiable by the headlamps, the snake hooks, and the taped-up, horn-rimmed glasses
) fumbling around with a smallish snake by the roadside. I pulled up, leaned out the window and inquired about their find ("Found anything delicious?" is the correct phrase to use in this situation - you GOTTA love Chinese!
). "Habu", they replied. Well, I thought, no sense in stopping for yet another
Protobothrops mucrosquamatus, a very common pitviper around here. My son, however, yelled "AWESOME!!! DAD, LET'S GO!!!!", jumped out of the van and ran over to the two fellows. Well, I thought (again), common snake or no, we're not in any rush, so if the kid gets all worked up over a habu, let him have some fun....he'll get bored of those soon enough. So I parked the car and moseyed over to the crime scene, where I realized with shock and awe that I had misheard the guy, while my son hadn't: it was a habu alright, but not the above-mentioned garden variety, oh no, but a real live Alishan (Mt. Ali) Habu, (
Ovophis monticola), one of the rarest snakes in Taiwan. It's endemic to the North of the island, only occurs above 1500 feet altitude, and likes cold weather. It's a rather short snake (ca. two feet max.) , but makes up for it in spades with its beautiful coloration and cammo patterns as well as its unusual body shape - most snakes here are long and slender, but the Alishan Habu's relative chunkiness reminds one of rattlesnakes or Gaboon vipers. I'd found this species
only once before, and now I was just as madly excited as I was back in April.
I quickly realized that the two herpers were in a bit of a pickle - the road was narrow, the shoulder steep and heavily overgrown, and there was no way to photograph the highly nervous snake in situ. The two guys had driven up there on their scooters and brought only their hooks and cameras, but no bags or tongs, so I graciously offered to use my tongs to stash the habu in my bag....or, better yet, in my new and shiny snake cage. The cage was given to me by a friend whose Vietnamese gardener crafts these containers from chicken wire and uses them to remove venomous reptiles from his employer's property, a large, forested
fern garden open to the public. I'd always viewed the cage as something of a curio and never thought I'd actually ever use it, since I usually just bag snakes if I can't photograph them on site, and also have vowed to never transport any hots at all - I'll rather pass up the photo op than make a grave mistake. Well, this situation clearly called for a serious revision of all those carefully crafted (and surely well-meaning) rules, so I broke out the cage, gently cajoled the snake into his new temporary home, loaded the whole circus act into the van, and off we went to the nearest parking lot. (Where I found that my external flash was busted, so I had to make do with the onboard flash, which is my excuse for the less-than-perfect pics.) Dig the little white spots on the tail!
Side story:While we were photographing the snake, a police cruiser pulled up, and one of the cops demanded to know what we were doing. I'm always very efficient with LE in these situations (being a Chinese-speaking foreigner and all - the shock value alone usually makes them go away), so I flashed my fabulous 10.000-watt smile and said, "Aw, gents, we're jes' takin' a few pix of this purdy snake we found over there." "Well, alright", the lawman said, "but I hope you guys are being careful - that snake might be venomous!". And before I could retort with a soothing reply that would make them bid us good night and resume their patrol, my son yelled "Damn straight that's a venomous snake, officer! It's an Alishan Habu, and maybe it looks kinda small, but it can kill us all dead if we make a wrong move, hawhawhaw....But don'cha worry none - we do that kinda stuff every night!!" Lucky for him that I don't believe in physical violence as an educational tool, otherwise I'd have slapped the brat to South Tasmania and back. Fortunately, after a short in-car pow-wow - the seconds ticking away VERY slowly - the law finally did take off, but I was not in the best of moods. Hans, of course, was having the time of his life and couldn't quit bragging about how he'd messed with the two cops..."Did you see their
faces when I said that? Heeheeheeeeee!!!! Wonder what they'll tell their buddies down at the station!!"
After all that excitement, it was time for some serious R&R, so we bought a fistful of
squidsicles, a bucket of
steamed pig's blood cake with hot sauce, and a quart of iced Japanese green tea, and then drove up to a large hilltop cemetery, where we sat on the roof of a small mausoleum and enjoyed the midnight view of the ocean and the mountains, as well as the stars and the moon, and of course all those criminally unhealthy, but oh-so-deeply-satisfying coronaries-on-a-stick
I'll be taking a few visiting friends around the island for the next six days, so I'll log off now until next weekend. We won't be doing any herping per se, but will traverse the Central Mountain Range, so there's always a chance of a few interesting critters crossing the road (or staring me in the eye from a roadside tree, as those macaques did last year on the Cross-Island Highway).
Cheers, and see y'all next week!
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Profile
Login
Register
