Helen & cobra

Helen & cobra
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

One morning, as we were getting ready to go out to the dunes to sample Meroles, we heard that Helen, the station manager, had a cobra trapped under a brick hole on her balcony. So we grabbed our cameras and rushed over to see what was going on. Sure enough, it was a good sized, black spitting cobra (Naja nigricollis woodi). Mark poked it out of its hole with a long stick, and it became annoyed enough that it crawled around the villa, and climbed a tree. This is normally a ground-dwelling species, so this was pretty unusual. It sat there for a very long time, just watching the people on the porch very closely. It was surprisingly alert and active. It followed the movements of our cameras, eyes, etc. And it helps explain why people might be afraid of snakes - this guy was pretty intimidating, especially when it started spitting from its 2m high perch!