langkau fiction

I love snakes. People who knows me knows that I love snakes. But I am neither a snake expert nor do I do crazy things like what they do on TV (e.g. catch snakes, play around with them and even talk to them!). Well, I did catch a baby Naja sumatrana once a couple of years back and that was a stupid thing to do. I read about snakes, I take photos of them and I regularly consult my friend, Neil, who is an expert on these slithering creatures (who also wrote a book called A Photographic Guide to Snakes & Other Reptiles of Borneo).

Anyways, on my way home from Sadir last night, I came across the Black Headed Cat Snake (Boiga nigriceps) crossing the road. I think it was an adult as the length was around 1.5 meters. It raised its neck to about 1ft when it saw my car coming towards it, figuring out the gigantic moving metal that was heading its way. I stopped and got out of my car to get a closer look at this beautiful specimen. It didn’t even attempt to run slither away from me! Instead, it raised its head again, flickering its dark forked tongue trying to smell sense the strange creature on two legs. This was good because it gave me time to take some photos of it. At the time, I wasn’t sure of the species because I was so damn nervous and excited at the same time.

The dark-head cat snake can grow to more than two meters long and like most cat snakes, it’s a back-fanged snake. Just imagine Dracula with a fanged first-molar instead of the usual cuspid (our canine lah…). Most people would ask this common question: is it venomous? Not in the way we commonly perceive as venomous, i.e. bite and die, or bite and cut off hands. This is probably a mildly venomous snake but the venom is localized. Ok, ok…I was reading Neil’s book yesterday and apparently, this snake is actually more dangerous than it seemed. The book said “[Black-headed Cat Snake] needs to be treated with caution, as envenomations from its bite have been reported“. Yes, the seven words were in bold, which means it’s not good news when this snake bites you! I’ve never heard anyone died of a cat snake’s bite. Then again, who would want to be bitten by any snake for that matter? Last night, this beautiful snake was more curious of its surrounding and the flashes from my camera.

Although the Boiga nigriceps is usually arboreal, it does come to the ground to do its hunting. It preys on lizards, birds, rodents and even other snakes. It inhabits lowland forests up to an altitude of 1,000 meters. Where I found this particular snake, the altitude was around 400 meters. Neil told me that the snake is usually reddish in color in Peninsula Malaysia but the ones in Borneo are often greyish or greenish. The one in this picture is olive-greyish in color. A much, much more beautiful photo — which isn’t mine, of course — could be found here.