Encounters with Snakes

Alan Linford

On the 1993 Alpine meet I encountered on the hills two vipers in one day, and on this year’s meet one snake (not a snake but a slow worm actually, a lizard without legs) in the YRC camp. It seems snakes are becoming a regular feature in my wanderings.  I suspect most members have stumbled across adders, my count must be at least two dozen. Two I have missed treading on by an inch or so – one on Skye and one on the North Yorkshire Moors; both on cold rainy days when snakes are sluggish: they hardly moved. I was wearing boots and canvas gaiters so the hazard was insignificant. Would the outcome have been the same had it been hot weather, with shorts and ankle boots the order of the day?

Boots and shorts were normal dress for walking in Nepal and Taiwan. In Nepal snakes, including cobras, were regular visitors in camp but I never met one on the hills. In Taiwan maps were not available and I made my own by following. any track through subtropical jungle and arrow bamboo, encountering many snakes from 1 ft. to 5 ft. long; all moved away. I have clear recollections of a 5 ft. specimen crossing a path between me and the person following. There is a heightening of personal sensitivity! I once put my hand on a grass clump not inches away from a sunbathing snake.  I walked into a green monster on Penghy Island (pescadores). We shot off, the snake into an aloe cactus and I downhill. That was the wrong action; You should stay clam and move away slowly. The illusion that snakes were non-aggressive was shattered whilst ascending Mt. Roland in Tasmania. Angie and I (in shorts) had stopped for a brew. We moved off and within a few yards along the track (narrow with dense shrub either side) we saw a 5ft shiny black copperhead snake. “It will move,” I said, approaching within 10ft. There was no chance of bypassing the reptile. We looked at each other for some time; I broke the stalemate by heaving a stick at it. The speed with which it rose about 3 ft. vertically hissed, flipped over backwards and disappeared airborne into the bush, was
astonishing; the blink of an eye. Fifty yards along the track we saw another one. I abandoned the ascent.

Whilst in Jasper Park, Canada, sat on a log having a brew with a fellow Rambler, snakes came up in the
conversation, “no snakes in Canada” he stated. I swung over the log to dispose of the tea bags only to stand on a
snake, instantly leapt away to stand on another one, then 3 of them; all harmless garter snakes just out of
hibernation.

What do you do if bitten? You need the correct identification of the snake and the antidote. Shouting for Tarzan and his Stanley knife will not do much good. Keep as still as possible.

If in foreign parts it is worth checking what snakes are around, keep  to wide open spaces and tracks, especially during the mating season when snakes are highly aggressive. They can sense ground vibration and will move away before you see them.