Ruminative Reminiscence: April 2011

An Elusive Bronze-back and other Adventures

I spent the last weekend at my grandmother’s house in Palakkad (Kerala). Every weekend I have spent there has always had its share of excitement and adventure. Yet each experience has been distinct from the other. This weekend was perhaps quieter than those before, but it wasn’t bereft of new things to learn. It is amazing how much one has yet to learn, but this should never overwhelm us. It should instead inspire us to continue learning.

The weekend started off with a better understanding of the war between the termites and the red ants. In my travails through my back garden I chanced upon a few old branches infested by termites. The termites had constructed passages and tunnels to ease their work. Unwittingly I stepped on a few termite infested branches and immediately there was a flutter of action and the exposed nest was pounced upon by the red fire ants. Kerala is full of them and these and are one of the fiercest insects I’ve ever seen. They pounce on any opportunity presented to them and the poor termites stood no chance at all. Over the years I’ve come to admire the way these ants organize themselves and go about protecting their nest. Just a couple of days ago I read this insightful article by Ranjit Daniels on, ‘Ants as Biological Indicators of Environmental Change’. His research has shown that generally the diversity of ants in a given area is representative of the overall environment degradation, or the lack of it. Though for some reason I don’t seem to remember these fire ants as being so ubiquitous in Kerala in my childhood. I definitely wouldn’t like to be stuck atop a mango or jackfruit tree in the midst of an ant attack, and as a child I scarcely remember that ever happening to me. Now every tree seems infested with them and they don’t seem picky about their food. I’ve seen them even prey upon snakes which haven’t been able to escape their burrows in time and even upon hapless chameleons. I cannot vouch for it but I’ve read reports that this particular ant is a foreign species to India and came on boats to India from South America (Brazil). It is also commonly known as the red imported fire ants.

Classically ants are classified as terrestrial, arboreal and fossorial; with terrestrial and fossorial being the most common. India is home to at least over 600 species of ants. (Number of species known to us is approximately 7600). My experience suggests that these particular ants have mastered at least two of the niches with effortless ease. I’ve seen their nests in tree leave bundled together (arboreal) and they seem to have taken quite a special liking towards mango trees (much to my dismay). I’ve also found these ants equally adept at scurrying the forest floor in search of food (terrestrial). They are quite comfortable beneath dead leaves, stones and logs. I've also seen them build permanent nest deep in ground. However I have not seen the characteristic ant hill that ants are associated with (fossorial). The picture attached will give you a better idea of the ants I’m talking about.

Every evening I generally walk down a few kilometres to a canal close to my house to watch the sunset. (The same spot which inspired me to compose ‘Carpe Diem’. To read it please visit- http://mukundpr-mytheories.blogspot.com/2011/01/new-poem-carpe-diem.html) However on that particular day I got a bit caught up at home and was able only to walk across to a fallow plot which my parents own downhill from my grandmother’s house. Perched atop the compound wall with my feet dangling six feet above the ground I witnessed a particularly rewarding evening of bird watching. I didn’t spy any rare species but it was one of those evenings where as a birdwatcher you learn new things about birds and their habits. It all started off with a fight between three brahminy kites over some prey caught earlier in the evening (a large mouse I believe). Initially there was this lone kite perched upon a water tank about fifty metres from where I was on the wall. It appeared to be feasting upon some prey which it had caught earlier in the evening. A couple of minutes later he (I’m not that sure but it looked like a lone male) was joined by a couple of guests who came over for dinner, uninvited obviously. So he tried to flee taking the dinner along and soared high into the sky with the mouse in clutched in his claws. Unfortunately the other couple weren’t to be out done so easily. They caught up with relative ease soon there was a bird fight accompanied by scratching talons, pecking beaks and plenty of oud screeching. There was this moment where all three stopped flapping their wings and were locked in a three way battle (two versus one actually), and they started descending and falling down the sky at an alarming rate. It was a test of who could hold on to the prey the longest before they crashed into the ground. Just ten metres off the ground the lone kite finally gave up on his claim to the feast as any respectable dinner host does and the visiting pair was allowed to claim their prize, which they took back to the water tank and shared in peace.

A brahminy kite

Less than ten metres from where I was perched was a house with had nestling magpie robin chicks in an electric meter box. Quite a dangerous place to be brought up with electric fuse wires close by, I must say. It had a very small opening just small enough for the parents to squeeze through but away from the reach of prying cats and birds of prey. The poor chicks had to wait for over an hour before their parents returned with food during which time the continuously kept calling out to their parents to return. Besides the kites and the magpies I spied a couple of white breasted kingfisher, some chestnut headed sunbirds, lots of egrets, a pied kingfisher, a crow pheasant, and many jungle crows and city crows.

A magpie robin

Finally now I take you to the story of the elusive bonze-backed tree snake. I need to take you back further by a week to tell you about this story. So on that fateful weekend I was alone in my grandmother’s house in Kerala as she had not yet returned from my Uncle’s house in Madras. So, I spent the late evening I walking along the back garden searching for interesting finds. It’s not a garden really but common courtesy dictates that houses have gardens and not wild uncontrolled plant growth. It was then I heard the characteristic rustling of leaves just behind me. It’s the sound everyone dreads (well almost everyone; I was in fact hoping that I would chance upon such an opportunity). I was fully prepared for this and I turned back swiftly, to see out of the corner of my eye, a two and a half foot long, slender and thin bodied able snake slink back into a creek in our old discarded well. After crawling back in, it then slowly brought its head back out about half and inches from between the bricks and stared back at me with its beautiful large black eyes for a good two minutes. Then finally it retreated back into its mini-cave. But those two minutes were beautiful; two minutes of perfect bliss. I could hear my heart beating and the feel the adrenaline pumping, and yet we had this perfect understanding. This wasn’t however the last I saw of the snake. After I’d seen the snake’s burrow the first time I spent many an hour waiting patiently next to it in the hope that the snake would venture out again. Much my dismay in those many hours spent waiting for the snake to appear again I managed just one more fleeting glance during the whole weekend. After I saw the snake for the first time I noticed that it had just shed its skin a couple of days ago and that was probably the reason why it looked such a stunning and beautiful brown. Unfortunately the creek was about five foot deep into the well and even though the well isn’t used anymore and has been filled up with dumped bricks the shed skin was just out of reach. Else I would have got a better photograph of it. I wasn’t able to extract it with a short stick either because at many places it was wedged between adjacent bricks. Over the years I’ve collected many snake skins with the longest I’ve found measures in at almost 7 feet. Earlier I used to collect them and bring them home. Now I’m not so fascinated by them anymore and I generally leave them where I found them after a short examination. This is not because I subscribe to the theory that it begets bad luck or it’s something dirty, but more because I feel that we should let things be instead of trying to disturb the natural surroundings.

The reasons that led me to identify the snake as a bronze-back were a characteristic thin tail, very large eyes set into a small thin and slender face and its extremely swift movement. I must add that the wait was agonisingly painful compounded by the hundreds of mosquitoes and red ants which bit me all over. If a question of why I didn’t use a mosquito repellent like odomos or the traditional lemon grass oil before venturing out popped up in your mind then let me take to opportunity to answer that here. Never use any strong scent or perfume before you go tracking. It’s a dead give-away of your identity and exact position. If you take the example of tracking a snake then you should know snakes have both very good eye-sight and an excellent sense of smell. As compared to most animals (more so reptiles) we are already at a huge disadvantage because we don’t have heat sensitive infrared vision. Endowed with such vision it is very easy for a snake to detect your presence long before you know where they are. If you wear any scents it puts you at an even greater disadvantage. Snakes can taste the air with their forked tongue and any scent will make it that much easier for them to detect you.

A spectacled cobra from a field near by. Do notice the bulge in its stomach.

Over the years I’ve had many great experiences with snakes and each has one of them has always left me with a feeling of great respect and admiration. However every time I’ve seen snakes I’ve never felt the urge or inclination to trouble them by trying to pick them up or extract them from their burrows. I’ve tended to leave them on their own and have been satisfied with observing them from a distance.

Each animal has its own distance of comfort. It is very important that we know of this beforehand, either intuitively or after a bit of research. Over the years I’ve come to understand that each snake species too has a different distance of comfort. With a whip tailed wine snake (of which I have attached a few of my photographs from my trip to Agumbe), I realised the key was staying just far enough so that the snake couldn’t whip at you. This allows you to get to about six inches to the snake. It is important that we never try to corner an animal or move in an intimidating manner towards it. Never stare into its eyes, always look at it for a few seconds, keep blinking and keep your head as low as possible. The smaller there is a lesser chance that you’ll be perceived as a threat. The larger the snake the further away you should stay. A two and a half metre rat snake even after I disturbed it and caused it retreat and unwittingly wedge itself in corner with walls on two sides permitted me to creep to just about two metres from where it was. Now obviously a rat snake isn’t poisonous but a bite from it can be pretty nasty and besides, who’d like to be bitten by a snake? The trick was coming in parallel to the wall ensuring that the snake understood that it had an escape route.

A whip tailed vine snake at Agumbe

Up till now my policy of not troubling a snake has always held me in good stead. A few years back on a hillock at the Rishi Valley School in Chittor, Andhra Pradesh, a small one and a half foot snake crossed extremely close to my feet (just a few centimetres off my toes to be more precise). I was very tempted to pick it up and put it in a bottle and then keep it for a while and release it downhill. In the end I thought the better of it and let it be, even though the snake seemed least perturbed by my presence. It was only recently that I came to realise that the beautiful snake I saw in the Rishi Valley with alternate white and black bands was the much feared ‘banded krait’. The named obviously being derived from the alternate white and black bands like in a zebra crossing. Its neurotoxic venom is so poisonous and potent that the banded krait is also know as the two step snake. It is believed that the victim once bitten would be dead within their taking two steps. Even if that is an exaggerated account the venom is indeed extremely poisonous.

A whip tailed vine snake at Agumbe

With a rapidly shrinking habitat to which Kerala is no exception there are an increasing number of cases of man-snake conflicts. However in my all my experience I’ve never yet been threatened by a snake. I can safely add that snakes are gentle creatures and all long as we give them the respect they deserve they will never deliberately attack humans (a lone exception might be a python attacking a small child, though in general they refrain from doing so.) Sorry, no pun intended. The myth that snakes are vicious and violent creatures that attack humans on sight is completely untrue. They’d much rather slink away into a dark corner and hide until the danger has passed. I think

there is no need for us to fear snakes and it is snakes that fear us in fact. I’m absolutely certain that with a certain degree of mutual respect snakes and humans can exist peacefully sans any unfortunate untoward incidents.

Mukund Palat Rao (April 23, 2011)