Green Keelback

Its been quite a long time since i ventured into the wilderness. A break for me came in the guise of www.sterlingresorts.org . Sterling had organised a trek for a group of visual communication students at Kodaikanal and had asked me to accompany them. The trip had been organised by Ms.Priya Dixit of International Marketing and her colleague Suresh , of Sterling.

Around 11.30 am we were strolling at valley view ( one of Sterling's resorts at Kodaikanal ) , this beauty was spotted by Suresh . Suresh loves snakes and has a finely tuned instinct for them. This one had a lump in the middle of its body and was crawling very slowly. Leaving Suresh watching over it closely , i rushed back to my room to grab my camera. Crouching besides the snake , i put my camera on the macro mode and snapped a few images. The green keelback is virtually harmless. Armed with that knowledge i sat right in front of it and observed its beautiful contours. As we were admiring its body movements , the lump in the middle of the snake started moving to its head. We had no clue as to what was to happen in the next few seconds.

As we watched , the snake reared up its head. Suresh and me were held spell bound as we could see its small, but well developed fangs. Just as we sensed something momentous to happen , the snake just spat out a frog. Oh what a sight. The scene would remain engraved in our mind. We saw the remains of the frog , as it emerged from the mouth , like a ball shooting out from a canon. It was then we realised that the lump in the middle of the snake had been a frog and the snake had made its kill. It spat out its kill , because it sensed us close by and was afraid for its safety , though we made sure that we did not disturb it. With the frog out of its body, the snake just zipped past us

P.S - Thanks to dear friend - Bikram (Bikramadditya Guha Roy) who took the efforts of sending the snap to Gerry Martin - http://www.striderexpeditions.com to identify the snake correctly. Thanks Bikram and thanks Gerry.

Note : - The green keelback, if roused it bluffs by spreading out its neck like a cobra and flees with the first opportunity. Exactly how the lovely reacted to us.