One morning in the great basin desert I was sitting on the ground on
a hillside at sunrise. After it got light enough I noticed I was
sitting next to a diamondback rattlesnake who was out to catch the
warming morning rays. Wanting to get a recording, I nudged him a
little with my parabola. All I got was a single shake out of his
chilled rattle. Further nudging only induced him to slither back
down his hole. Lucky for me those early mornings are nice and cold.
Kevin Colver
On Jan 4, 2008, at 9:25 AM, Scott Connop wrote:
> There are lots of mediocre encounters that anyone working in the
> field would remember, but a couple stick out in my mind because
> both of them were more frightening in retrospect. (I will send the
> second story later).
>
> On my first night in Varirata in Papua New Guinea, I spent the
> night cruising the roads listening for owls and owlet-nightjars. At
> the side of the road I noticed a glistening reflection on the small
> shoulder of one road that headed out to a lookout. Upon further
> investigation, this turned out to be a rather large brown python
> that I decided to measure. I found his head and upper body partway
> down the embankment but while I was measuring him he kept trying to
> turn his head on me and repeatedly banged it against a shrub right
> beside it. At 15 feet, I thought this was a serious snake and I
> felt a tiny pang of sympathy for the numerous wallabies that I had
> seen that night. Exciting stuff, but obviously a situation I
> controlled, and I wanted birds.
>
> After recording a Large-tailed Nightjar in the picnic area parking
> lot an hour later, I was walking back to our car with my wife,
> flashlight bouncing off my leg as I walked. I was only 20 feet from
> my car when I caught a movement a meter in front of my feet. I put
> my arm in front of my wife and stopped us. The flashlight revealed
> a nasty looking little ( 8 inches) viper that simply had stopped in
> our path as it was crossing the gravel parking lot. I had my
> suspicions but it wasn't until several days later back in Port
> Moresby that I positively identified it as a Death Adder. Our host
> told us that, in 8 years of visiting Varirata, he had never seen
> one but that he had not spent that much night time in the park. He
> then went on to tell us a story about a local politician who had
> been bitten by one while working in his garden at lunch time. By
> the time he got to hospital for anti-venom, the staff person with a
> key to the proper cupboard was on lunch and, by the time they were
> able to administer, it was too late. The time span was about half
> an hour. And we had been at least 60 minutes from the nearest
> hospital at midnight. Flashlights are wonderful inventions.
>
> Scott Connop
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