Trendy folk have a personal trainer. I have a personal herpetologist. Whenever I spot a new reptile in the house or garden I fire off an email to Ron Lilley in Sanur, who responds enthusiastically with identification and advice.
Snakes have an unfortunate reputation for being vicious, poisonous and giving people bad dreams. This is quite unfair. Balinese snakes are very shy and law-abiding. They probably tell their offspring scary stories about huge, violent homo sapiens who will club them to death with big sticks, which explains why we hardly ever see a serpent if it sees us first.
Not everyone shares my admiration of the reptile race. Phobias slither right across cultures; Wayan is terrified of snakes. I explain that not all snakes are poisonous. She looks dubious. I tell her that some people keep snakes as pets. She lets it be known in three languages that this idea gives her the heebie-jeebies. As far as Wayan is concerned, the only good snake is a dead one. Her adoring husband obliges by killing every hapless serpent they see, despite my pleas for mercy.
My previous house was near a rice field and we often saw harmless black, brown and beige sawah snakes. Although I’m now only a kilometre away, we get much less variety. There’s a dainty little black and brown pond snake that keeps the frog population in check by grazing on newly hatched tadpoles. I asked my staff it was poisonous. “Probably,” Wayan said, on principle. “Only in the afternoon,” corrected Nyoman. I’m told that there are pythons near the river but I’ve never seen one. Apart from that, the snake population here seems to be limited to green pit vipers.
There are a lot of them. During construction of the house, the workers killed two. Shortly after I moved in, Nyoman killed a few more. After that there was a hatching and we found tiny juveniles all over the garden for several weeks. By this time I had persuaded Nyoman to pick them up between two sticks and toss them gently over the riverbank. “Go to the river,” I hiss to the little ones. “Don’t come into the garden; it’s dangerous here.”
The green pit viper is a very pretty snake. Fluorescent green with a dark red tail, the ones around here seldom exceed about 60 cm in length. They don’t actually live in pits; the name refers to a little temperature-sensitive dent between the nostril and the eye. It’s true that they pack a nasty venom and can deliver a painful bite, but they’re not aggressive by nature. When I meet one in the garden, it invariably slips away in embarrassment as soon as it sees me.
I don’t see them very often because I’m not looking for them. But Wayan is convinced that they’re afraid of me and only approach the house when I leave town. This could be true. When I was gone in July, there were 3 green pit viper dramas. Wayan was sitting in the pantry ironing one day, dreamily glancing at the palm tree outside the unglazed window, when she focused on the unblinking gaze of a palm-green serpent that was watching her from a metre away. Then my housesitter was having a massage on the terrace one day when the masseuse noticed a green viper in a tendril of flowering vine that grew against the house. Then there was another one in the mango tree. As always seems to happen, the snakes fatalistically stay where they are after discovery, awaiting certain death from Nyoman’s machete. I know of a frail older lady who killed one with her shoe.
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I don’t know how you can sleep at night with all the snakes around here,” declares Wayan darkly. None of the windows have glass in them and there is indeed nothing to keep a snake out should it want to come in. But why would it?
Actually, according to Ron’s research, deaths from green pit viper bites are very rare. Even if the snake bites you, chances are it won’t release its venom. Only the extremely young or old might succumb. Sanglah Hospital, SOS and BIMC are all prepared to treat snake bite.
In case someone is bitten by a green pit viper, here is Ron’s first aid advice. Keep the patient calm and still and reassure him that he won’t die. Wrap an elastic bandage or scarf from just above the bite, snugly to slow the spread of venom but not so tightly to cut off circulation. Loosen it if toes or fingers turn numb or blue. Immobilize the limb by tying it to a stick or a rolled up newspaper or magazine, then take the patient to one of the above treatment centres immediately. Try to keep the bitten area lower than the heart.
Ron reminds us that we can prevent being bitten by cutting back long grass and undergrowth so it’s easier to see and avoid wandering serpents in the garden. Seasoned snake experts declare that almost all bites can be avoided by watching where you put your hands and feet.
Wayan continues to believe that my presence keeps the compound snake-free. I have a sneaking suspicion, though, that there’s quite a colony of green pit vipers down by the river, giving their kids nightmares with stories about a man with a machete.
