SNAKES AND MORE…A Curvy Path Less Taken.
If you are the type terrified to confront the creepy crawly creatures of the night, skip this piece please. Others, should you be convinced that to go looking for them in pelting rain in the dead of night is stuff crackpots indulge in, then i accept the compliment. Read on.
Packing my faithful rucksack - which must easily be a strong contender for the ‘most vividly travelled rucksack’ global award, if there were to be a category of this kind – with essential trivia’s, i set off last week on a herpetofauna expedition, i had registered for earlier, in the forests of the Western Ghats. Hepetofauna, a generic term, refers to all species of reptiles and amphibians. But this one was slightly more precise. A Pit Viper Expedition!
You guessed it right! Like many of you out there, my family too thought i’d lost my marbles. Demented, the new buzz word, was closer to it. Mom was almost at breakpoint and managed to convey her exasperation through my kids, who turned approvers and became the mainstays of my logic, whatever that logic was. Wifey was too stunned to offer a comment. Convincing my way through all of that, it was time to head for Goa, from where this craziness was to commence. Which other place, i thought, could be more befitting?
Nirmal Kulkarni, the tall, lanky, soft-spoken herpetologist and scientist, has almost 20years behind him handling, documenting, conserving, basically indulging in reptilian study and works out of Goa. For the latter part, i envy him. Likewise, petite Mittal, disciplined Devdatta and humourous Shrinivas have each excelled in their fields of studying amphibians, millipedes and centipedes, butterflies, birds besides venomous snakes across Indian terrain. So, the rest of us relative greenhorns, Suhas, Omkar, Tapoti, Sarang, Glenda knew were secure amidst the vast coils of collective experience when it came to confronting the much avoidable fangs of the Viper.
The brief given to us was ssss-simple! To look for and find any one of the three types of Vipers viz: Bamboo Pit Viper, Malabar Pit Viper and the Hump nosed Pit Viper. All three resident species of the region. Anything else was welcome and surplus on the expedition.
Over the next four nights and days ten of us scanned the hills, ponds and trails of Amboli, the ghats and lateritic plateaus of Mhadei Wild Life Sanctuary near Chorla, Bhagwan Mahavira Wild Life Sanctuary at Mollem and Castle Rock near Dudhsagar falls. Incidentally, these places are spread across the States of Maharashtra, Goa and Karnataka.
Vipers are essentially shy and nocturnally active snakes, with striking colour morphs on their body, and posses a distinctly triangular head. They are largely misunderstood and try to minimize their confrontation with mankind. Growing to a maximum of 4ft in length, they like to hang around water holes for the prospect of prey at nights and head out to tree canopy reaches by daybreak. However, it is this genre that also accounts for a huge number of painful deaths annually due to their unforgiving bites in the fields and farms of rural India. Located in between their nostrils and eyes, are two heat sensing pits from which it derives its name. So sensitive are these pits to temperature change that a variation of 0.001 degrees Celsius is enough to alert them and take note of the passing prey to complete the job at an impressive strike rate of 99.5%! This weapon, along with its ‘wait and watch’ approach towards preying, helps wonderfully well in the dead of night. Unmindful ‘passers by’ such as rodents, squirrel and frogs are caught unawares only to end up in the innards of the reptile. It is not strange therefore that an important missile in the US weaponry, the Sidewinder, was inspired and developed on the very basis of this ‘page from nature’ technology of heat sensing and guiding.
The days that followed kind of had a typical cycle. Wake up. Breakfast. Travel to destination. Scan the area. Lunch. Walk into wilderness for opportunistic finds and document them. Tea. More field work, fill-up work sheets on finds. Dinner. Scan forests and plains in the dead of the night for more species and specimens. Ofcourse, this spine-thrilling routine was interspersed with some very interesting films on the wonderful work being done by Romulus Whitaker and Ashok Captain, with whom Nirmal and others have been working on creating awareness and in conservation of reptiles of all kinds, including the King Cobra. Exchanging anecdotes and tales from experiences in the wild is what bonded this diverse group further. Learning snake bite protocol, anti-venom actions & reactions and Taxonomy (study of snake skin patterns) added value to knowledge quotient.
What caught my wonder was the intensity of sincerity that each one of us was putting into the process. All of those of us novices who had registered for this program had never quite done stuff like this before. Nothing ever kept us away from ‘dressing up’ for the occasions - rainwear, gumboots et al - and heading out without any hint of trepidation into slush, streams and meadows with powerful flashlights and camera in tow to make our finds and document them. Not the leeches that some of us lost blood to, not the stormy nights and torrential rains, not the late hours and miles of searching walks, not the hundreds of tiresome notings on the Kestrel (humidity, temperature and wind speed measuring instrument) and GPS readings, not the never drying and mostly stinking clothes and socks, not the nettles, ticks and mosquitoes. Nothing seemed to slow down our enthusiasm. Not even the straying Malabar Pit Viper that had uncannily found its way in the ladies’ bedroom! My sense is that the constant thrill of uncertainty, the magical rejuvenating powers of nature and the collective bonhomie, all woven by a singular thread of loving kindness for the creatures less fortunate, kept us at it.
At final count, over five days, we had between us spotted, identified and documented eight Pit Vipers (including one which was over a meter long that had just feasted), nine Green Vine Snakes, number of amphibians including some rare finds like the Malabar Gliding Frog and Caecilian, millipedes and centipedes in enviable numbers, water and field scorpions, range of spiders including the dreaded Tarantula, hunting ants (referred to as ‘Crazy Army’ for their ferocious bites and much feared ability to decimate prey in short time). All of this left me incredibly enthralled!
Chill mom, your son maybe crazy but he’s back safe…and happy! How’s that for an ending?
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