July 8, 2004
"Snake Phobia Update"
by Anna White

The day after my encounter with the Giant Hog Nosed snake (Leioheterodon madagascariensis), my pounding head, lurching stomach and streaming tears of fear had sufficiently subsided. That was until I was faced with another test. Shawn the team's adventurous teenage creature capturer pounced on me with a Mimophis snake in front of the whole team and additional visitors. Despite its small size it took only seconds for me to become a jittering wreck yet again. On this occasion though I had a yearning to at least try to touch the snake and strongly suspected that this time my nerves were due to the well intended but unhelpful pressure from the assembled crowd.

Thankfully it wasn't long before an audience free opportunity presented itself and this time, to my husband's utter astonishment, I was in there faster than a speeding bullet! We were in Jardin Bontanique B on trap check duty when our excellent guide Alain, a herpetologist himself, found a Mimophis, which within seconds I had slithering up my arm. Needless to say the camera was quickly brought to the fore to capture this rather unexpected sight.

Personally my phobia has never been a fear of being bitten or any dislike of the often misconceived sliminess of snakes. I've always known that they are supposed to feel smooth, but the feel of its skin on mine was like silk. And the way that the muscles contracted and relaxed to provide motion sent shivers down my spine, but in a good way. I went to my tent a very happy woman that night, having made the most of what might well have been an opportunity of a lifetime.

As it turned out lady luck wasn't ready to leave camp just yet. As Thursday siesta commenced, I noticed out of the corner of my eye an excited flurry of activity near Alain's tent. I was certain something interesting of the reptilian kind had been found. I quickly bounded to Alain's side and was amazingly fortunate to witness the discovery of a different type of snake, one that none of us had ever seen before, not even Alain who was equally excited. I could tell we were on to something good.

I was very taken with this snake and much handling and photography followed. The markings and colourings were extremely pretty and detailed, and much more to my liking than those of the Mimophis. Especially pretty was the snake's head; the area directly above her relatively large eyes shone iridescently like mother of pearl. After much investigation and cross checking the snake was identified as a Stenophis Species II, a very rarely sighed snake. That is not to say that the snake is rare in itself, but that very few sightings have been recorded due to limited research to date into their specific species. I was delighted to be able to help Alain with his data collection, counting the scales on the snakes underside was quite a feat, as was identifying the sex, a female in this case.

Having come to Madagascar with a thirty-four year old snake phobia I had not only readily handled my nemesis, but actually went away disappointed at not having seen some of Madagascar's larger serpents, for example the Madagascar Ground Boa (Acrantophis madagascariensis), which with a total length of three metres is the largest snake found on the island. Whether my phobia is now cured remains to be seen, however, I am now confident leaving the Great Red Island that I shall snap up all future opportunities to answer that question.